THE FAIET PRINCE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 298, 16 October 1873, Page 8

THE FAIET PRINCE.

Once on a time, a king and queen made themselves very unhappy because they had no heir to their throne; and they prayed for one ; and, lo ! on one bright summer morning, the queeu, waking from her sleep, saw a cradle beside her bed, and in the cradle a beautiful sleeping babe. Great day throughout the kingdom. But aa the infant grew up it became very awkward and fretful ; it lost its beauty, it would not learn its lessons, it was as naughty as a child could be. The parents were very sorrowful ; the heir, so longed for, promised to be a great plague to themselves and their subjects. At last one day, to add to their trouble, two little bumps appeared on the prince's shoulders. All the doctors were consulted as to the cause and the cure of this deformity. Of course they tried the effect of back-bands and Bteel machines, which gave the little prince great pain, and made him more unamiable thau.ever. The bumps, nevertheless, grew larger, and as they increased so the prince sickened and pined away. At last a skilful surgeon proposed, as the only chance of saving the prince's life, that the bumps should be cut out, and the next morning was fixed for that operation. But at night the queen saw, or dreamed she saw, a beautiful shape standing by her bedaide. And it said to hep" reproachfully, " Ungrateful woman ! How wouldat fchou repay me for the precious boon that my favor bestowed on thee ? In me behold the Queen of the Fairies. For the heir to thy kiugdom. I consigned to thy charge an infant of. Fairyland, to become a blessing to thee and to thy people ; and thou wouldst inflict upon it a death of torture by the surgeon's knife." And the queen answered, " Precious indeed thou mayst call the boon f A miserable, sickly, feverish ebanglinsj." "Art thou so dull," said the beautiful visitant, "as not to comprehend that the earliest instincts of the fairy child would be those of discontent "at the exile from its native borne ; and in that discontent it would have pined itself to death, or grown up, soured and malignant, a fairy still in its power, but a fairy of wrath and evil, had n,ot tb,e BfaeDgth of itj» inborn

nature sufficed to develop the growth of its wings ? That which, thy bigness condemns as the deformity of the human-born, is to the fairy-born, the crowning perfection of its ,beaiisy. Woe to thee if thou Suffer not 'tlie wings of the fairy child to grow." And the next morning the queen sent away the surgeon when he came with his horrible knife, and removed the back-board and the steel machines from the prince's shoulders, though all the doctors predicted that the child would die. And from that moment the royal heir began to recover bloom and health. And when at last, out of those deforming bumps, budded .delicately forth plumage of show-white wings, the wayward peevishness of the prince gave place to sweet temper. Instead of scratching his teachers,, he became the quickest and most 'docile of pupils ; grew up to be the jSjrfcf ■ bis parents and the pride of 'their people ; and the people said, " In him we shall have hereafter such a king} -.as we have never yet known.; — Ifrom "Kenelm Chillingly," by the .late Lord Lytton.