108 WHISPERS FROM FAIRYLAND. [itn

 

ITI.

THE SILVER FAIRIES.

IT was an old piece of furniture—a very old piece of
furniture, and it stood in an old house, too. Nobody
knew when that house had been built, or how long it
had stood in the corner of the dark dismal London
street of which it was certainly the principal mansion.
You had only to look at it, however, to be certain
that it had occupied its position for a very great
number of years, and that if age could make houses
respectable, it had reached the very climax of respect-
ability. But, like other respectable creatures, it had
its reverses of fortune; and at the time of which we
write it was being ransacked and trodden down by a
motley tribe of persons hardly so respectable as itself,
who had come to witness that desecration of an
ancient building and dismemberment of its internal
arrangements which are popularly known as a sale by
auction. Ah! what a melancholy thing is that self-
same transaction, when household gods are scattered
to the winds, and objects which have been the
hallowed treasures of a happy home are exposed to
the gaze of the vulgar herd, and chaffered for by
greasy and disreputable bidders. Not that all bidders
are of necessity cither disreputable or greasy, but
that such characters not unfrequently preponderate