the reader turns away with a prudish disgust, and the author is
discredited.

When we were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect
the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own. We never
cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth.
And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the Crystal Palace
of Truth lay and how to reach it. But to-day we are expected to write
pages of facts, while the truth is simply this:

"There was a king."

I remember vividly that evening in Calcutta when the fairy story began.
The rain and the storm had been incessant. The whole of the city was
flooded. The water was knee-deep in our lane. I had a straining hope,
which was almost a certainty, that my tutor would be prevented from
coming that evening. I sat on the stool in the far corner of the
veranda looking down the lane, with a heart beating faster and faster.
Every minute I kept my eye on the rain, and when it began to grow less I
prayed with all my might; "Please, God, send some more rain till half-
past seven is over." For I was quite ready to believe that there was no
other need for rain except to protect one helpless boy one evening in
one corner of Calcutta from the deadly clutches of his tutor.

If not in answer to my prayer, at any rate according to some grosser law
of physical nature, the rain did not give up.

But, alas ! nor did my teacher.

Exactly to the minute, in the bend of the lane, I saw his approaching