Lilith

"You are just come from them!"
"I never heard those names before!"
"You would not hear them. Neither people knows its own name!"
"Strange!"
"Perhaps so! but hardly any one anywhere knows his own name! It would make many a fine gentleman stare
to hear himself addressed by what is really his name!"
I held my peace, beginning to wonder what my name might be.
"What now do you fancy yours?" she went on, as if aware of my thought. "But, pardon me, it is a matter of
no consequence."
I had actually opened my mouth to answer her, when I discovered that my name was gone from me. I could
not even recall the first letter of it! This was the second time I had been asked my name and could not tell it!
"Never mind," she said; "it is not wanted. Your real name, indeed, is written on your forehead, but at present
it whirls about so irregularly that nobody can read it. I will do my part to steady it. Soon it will go slower,
and, I hope, settle at last."
This startled me, and I was silent.
We had left the channels and walked a long time, but no sign of the cottage yet appeared.
"The Little Ones told me," I said at length, "of a smooth green country, pleasant to the feet!"
"Yes?" she returned.
Lilith
"They told me too of a girl giantess that was queen somewhere: is that her country?"
"There is a city in that grassy land," she replied, "where a woman is princess. The city is called Bulika. But
certainly the princess is not a girl! She is older than this world, and came to it from yours−−with a terrible
history, which is not over yet. She is an evil person, and prevails much with the Prince of the Power of the
Air. The people of Bulika were formerly simple folk, tilling the ground and pasturing sheep. She came among
them, and they received her hospitably. She taught them to dig for diamonds and opals and sell them to
strangers, and made them give up tillage and pasturage and build a city. One day they found a huge snake and
killed it; which so enraged her that she declared herself their princess, and became terrible to them. The name
of the country at that time was THE LAND OF WATERS; for the dry channels, of which you have crossed
so many, were then overflowing with live torrents; and the valley, where now the Bags and the Lovers have
their fruit−trees, was a lake that received a great part of them. But the wicked princess gathered up in her lap
what she could of the water over the whole country, closed it in an egg, and carried it away. Her lap,
however, would not hold more than half of it; and the instant she was gone, what she had not yet taken fled
away underground, leaving the country as dry and dusty as her own heart. Were it not for the waters under it,
every living thing would long ago have perished from it. For where no water is, no rain falls; and where no
rain falls, no springs rise. Ever since then, the princess has lived in Bulika, holding the inhabitants in constant
terror, and doing what she can to keep them from multiplying. Yet they boast and believe themselves a
prosperous, and certainly are a self−satisfied people−−good at bargaining and buying, good at selling and
cheating; holding well together for a common interest, and utterly treacherous where interests clash; proud of
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