In my Commonplace...

  "Imagine that you are reading a fairy tale. Here's a cocky young prince on his way to kill some monster who guards the water of life. The prince stops to eat his lunch in the shade by a brook.  A loathsome frog asks for a bite of his sandwich  but the hero will not lower himself to sup with a slimy amphibian and says so in as many words. Well, there 's no doubt. He's going to come to a bad end. When his younger brother comes by next year, however, he'll be glad to give that frog bites of his peanut butter sandwich, a little Kool-Aid, and even some polite chit-chat. You can just bet that that boy will bring back not only the water of life but a comely princess as well.
     Behind this common theme lies the suspicion that the palpable world we see before us conceals other worlds from our view. What inklings we have of those worlds we have in the suggestions of our language, and it is in our language that we have access to those worlds."

                                Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say