But away off from the cities there still lives a race of unflattered
fairies who are not snobbish, and who love little girls and boys in
pinafores and ragged jackets. These spirits are not very handsome, and
so the artists do not draw their pictures, and they do not get into
gilt-edge Christmas books. Dear, ugly, good fairies! I hope they will not
be spoiled by my telling you something about them.
Little Bobby Towpate saw some of them; and it's about Bobby, and the
fairies he saw, that I want to speak. Bobby was the thirteenth child in
a rather large family--there were three younger than he. He lived in a
log cabin on the banks of a stream, the right name of which is "Indian
Kentucky Creek." I suppose it was named "Indian Kentucky" because it is
not in Kentucky, but in Indiana; and as for Indians, they have been gone
many a day. The people always call it "The Injun Kaintuck." They tuck up
the name to make it shorter.
Bobby was only four years and three-quarters old, but he had been in
pantaloons for three years and a half, for the people in the Indian
Kaintuck put their little boys into breeches as soon as they can
walk--perhaps a little before. And such breeches! The little white-headed
fellows look like dwarf grandfathers, thirteen hundred years of age.
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