There are all sorts of little garden
gates with golden keys on glass tables, and you set about growing
shorter or taller, as the case may be, to make yourself a proper height
to reach the key and slip through the door. You don't even need to
hurry, if you are firm about not grasping the hand of any Red Queen that
may come your way, and yet it isn't a land of manana; it's a land of
"Why Not?" The magic has nothing to do with one's age; I feel it now
even more than I did twenty years ago, and Grandmother felt it at eighty
just as I did at eighteen. Ulysses could have himself lashed to the mast
and snap his fingers at the Sirens, but I know of no protection against
the Southwest except to somehow close the shutters of your imagination.
However, let me not be a Calvinist; because it is enchanting, why should
I fear it?
I shall never forget my first experience of the spell. I was invited by
my Grandmother to go to California for several months. There were four
of us, and we were all tired, for one reason or another; Grandmother
because she was eighty, and it's a strenuous matter to live eighty
years; my Aunt because she had been desperately ill; C.
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