--- title: "The Unruly Sprite: A Partial Fairy Tale by Henry Van Dyke — Classic E…" description: "Read a free sample of The Unruly Sprite: A Partial Fairy Tale by Henry Van Dyke at Publica Now — a public-domain classic ebook, readable online." canonical: "https://publica.now/creators/vito/works/the-unruly-sprite-a-partial-fairy-tale" --- Literary # The Unruly Sprite: A Partial Fairy Tale by Henry Van Dyke [ V Vito ](https://publica.now/creators/vito) Follow $1.99 [ Sign in to buy ](https://publica.now/access?redirect=%2Fcheckout%2Fthe-unruly-sprite-a-partial-fairy-tale) Secure payment on Stripe. publica.now never sees your card. Share Link copied Format epub Published May 03, 2026 Rating No reviews yet ![The Unruly Sprite: A Partial Fairy Tale](https://fls-a13cb2d7-1b3e-4883-a0bd-297afd110a11.367be3a2035528943240074d0096e0cd.r2.cloudflarestorage.com/works/01kqnm2s37731f7mfwx3bnrp0j/cover.png?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=d29ce3bb571c165c97a702f29f7aee93%2F20261015%2Fauto%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20261015T195934Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Signature=21c2362e50965b84b7298f58a48a758cb6ae1e8d32709f71bf6f7f2a05e847c8) ## About this work The Unruly Sprite: A Partial Fairy Tale by Henry Van Dyke — a public-domain edition published by publica.now. Sample ## Take a look inside Produced by Rich Kuslan THE UNRULY SPRITE By Henry van Dyke A Partial Fairy Tale There was once a man who was also a writer of books. The merit of his books lies beyond the horizon of this tale. No doubt some of them were good, and some of them were bad, and some were merely popular. But he was all the time trying to make them better, for he was quite an honest man, and thankful that the world should give him a living for his writing. Moreover, he found great delight in the doing of it, which was something that did not enter into the world's account—a kind of daily Christmas present in addition to his wages. But the interesting thing about the man was that he had a clan or train of little sprites attending him—small, delicate, aerial creatures, who came and went around him at their pleasure, and showed him wonderful things, and sang to him, and kept him from being discouraged, and often helped him with his work. If you ask me what they were and where they came from, I must frankly tell you that I do not know. Neither did the man know. Neither does anybody else know. But he had sense enough to understand that they were real—just as real as any of the other mysterious things, like microbes, and polonium, and chemical affinities, and the northern lights, by which we are surrounded. Sometimes it seemed as if the sprites were the children of the flowers that die in blooming; and sometimes as if they came in a flock with the birds from the south; and sometimes as if they rose one by one from the roots of the trees in the deep forest, or from the waves of the sea when… [ Sign in to buy ](https://publica.now/access?redirect=%2Fcheckout%2Fthe-unruly-sprite-a-partial-fairy-tale) The sample continues in the full work. [ #classic ](/search?query=classic) [ #public-domain ](/search?query=public-domain) [ #library ](/search?query=library) ## Reviews No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts. [Sign in to leave a review](https://publica.now/access?redirect=%2Fcreators%2Fvito%2Fworks%2Fthe-unruly-sprite-a-partial-fairy-tale) No reviews yet. 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