III.] THE SILVER FAIRIES. 15

 

Our sparrow now would fain return
To feathers brown and former station,
But meets, alas! refusal stern

And vainly asks for transmutation.
The hour arrives—he mounts—he flies,
And vainly like a sparrow twitters,

He falls ; proclaiming as he dies—

‘* Alas ! all is not gold that glitters !’”’

At the conclusion of these words the voice stopped,
and after a brief space of time, during which the
music sounded somewhat mournfully, the Silver
Fairies retired, and the piece of furniture shut itself
as usual,

Simon could not understand it at all. For one
moment an uncomfortable doubt stole over his mind
whether the allegory. of the sparrow in pheasant’s
feathers was not intended to signify himself and his
new aspirations ; but after a moment’s thought, he
rejected the idea, or at all events put it aside as one
too unlikely to be seriously entertained. Nothing,
indeed, could at this period have shaken his confi-
dence in Joe Muggins, or his conviction that he had
done well in the choice which he had made of an
-accession of wealth in preference to any other gift
which the Fairy could have bestowed. In fact he
felt supremely happy and contented. For, although
those good and wise people are doubtless perfectly
right who tell us that riches do not constitute happi-
ness, yet so long as the perversity of human nature
leads people to fancy the contrary to be the case,
those who find themselves suddenly elevated from
comparative poverty to unbounded affluence cannot
be prevented from feeling just as happy as if the