§895

‘I was about five years old. It was late summer. My grandfather and I were walking in a neighbor’s woods across the street from his place, just off their country driveway at the bottom of a large, wooded hill. Grandpa was talking to the neighbor on the road, and I wandered off a little way on my own across a bright, grassy field. There was a very large maple tree at the bottom of the hill. I walked into the shade beneath it as the day was quite warm and [I] met a little man. He was about three feet tall, rotund, had a long white beard, a ruddy smiling face, and was dressed in mustard yellow from head to toe-boots and a tall hat with a wide brim and a flat top. I, being only five, thought he was just another neighbor and said ‘Hello’. He just smiled at me and gave me a nod with a wide toothy grin, he had very sparkly, happy hazel eyes (rather like my own!) and took a long drag from a clay and wood pipe similar to an old Bavarian style. I found him enchanting. We stood there for a minute or two just enjoying the day in companionable silence, until Grandpa called for me. I waved at Grandpa, and turned back to my new friend, but he was gone. I told Grandpa all about him and asked him if he knew the little fellow. He looked around to see if anyone was there, then laughed, and said ‘I’m afraid I don’t! Sounds like you met an old elf!’ We went home and never spoke of it again. Years later when I was eighteen years old, I got a job chopping firewood and helping out another neighbor who lived at the top of the hill. He had a five-year-old son, and one day I noticed he was drawing something interesting. My heart leaped into my mouth as I recognized the little yellow-clad man! I asked him who it was, and he told me ‘It’s the happy little man who lives at the bottom of the hill under the big maple! I see him sometimes, he’s nice!’ I laughed and said, ‘I’ve seen him, too!’ I started to look around for him while I was working, but never saw him myself again.’ ‘Like a jolly little gnome.’ ‘It was a fairy I feel sure.’ ‘I felt the fairy I saw was a kind of guardian of that place, and meant well.’