H II. WITH MY READER. AVING silenced my Aunt Tabithy, I shall be generous enough in my triumph, to offer an explanatory chat to my reader. This is a history of Dreams; and there will be those who will sneer at such a history, as the work of a dreamer. So indeed it is; and you, my courteous reader, are a dreamer too! You would perhaps like to find your speculations about wealth, marriage or influence, called by some be, ter name than Dreams. You would like to see the history of them if written at all-baptized at the font of your own vanity, with some such title as-life's cares, or life's work. If there had been a philosophic naming to my observations, you might have reckoned them good as it is, you count them all bald and palpable fiction. But is it so? I care not how matter of fact you may be, you have in your own life, at some time, proved the very truth of what I have set down: and the chances are, that even now, gray as you may be, and economic as you may be, and devotional as you pretend to be, you light up your Sabbath reflections with just such dreams of wealth, of per centages, or of family, as you will find scattered over these pages. I am not to be put aside with any talk about stocks, and duties, and respectability: all these though very eminent matters, are but so many types in the volume of your thought; and your eager resolves about them, are but so many ambitious waves, breaking up from that great sea of dreamy speculation, that has spread over your soul, from its first start into the realm of CONSCIOUSNESS. No man's brain is so dull, and no man's eye so blind, that they cannot catch food for dreams. Each little episode of life is full, had we but the perception of its fullness. There is no such thing as blank, in the world of thought. Every action and emotion have their development growing and gaining on the soul. Every affection has its tears and smiles. Nay, the very material world is full of meaning, and by suggesting thought, is making us what we are, and what we will be. The sparrow that is twittering on the edge of my balcony, is calling up to me this moment, a world of memories that reach over half my life time, and a world of hope that stretches farther than any flight of sparrows. The rose-tree which shades his mottled coat is full of buds and blossoms; and each bud and blossom is a token of promise, that has issues covering life, and reaching beyond death. The quiet sunshine beyond the flower and beyond the sparrow,-glistening upon the leaves, and playing in delicious waves of warmth over the reeking earth, is lighting both heart and hope, and quickening into activity a thousand thoughts of what has been, and of what will be. The meadow stretching away under its golden floodwaving with grain, and with the feathery blossoms of the grass, and golden butter cups, and white, nodding daisies, comes to my eye like the lapse of fading childhood,―studded here and there with the bright blossoms of joy, crimsoned all over with the flush of health, and enamelled with memories that perfume the soul. The blue hills beyond, with deep blue shadows gathered in their bosom, lie before me like mountains of years, over which I shall climb through shadows to the slope of Age, and go down to the deeper shadows of Death. Nor are dreams without their variety, whatever your character may be. I care not how much, in the pride of your practical judgment, or in your learned fancies, you may sneer at any dream of love, and reckon it all a poet's fiction: there are times when such dreams come over you like a summer cloud, and almost stifle you with their warmth. Seek as you will for increase of lands or moneys, and there are moments when a spark of some giant mind will flash over your cravings, and wake your soul suddenly to a quick, and yearning sense of that influence which is begotten of intellect; and you task your dreams-as I have copied them here-to build before you the pleasures of such a renown. I care not how worldly you may be there are times when all distinctions seem like dust, and when at the graves of the great, you dream of a coming country, where your proudest hopes shall be dimmed forever. Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker, you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is but a dream. Yet you call this fiction: you stave off the thoughts in print which come over you in reverie. You will not admit to the eye what is true to the heart. Poor weakling, and worldling,—you are not strong enough to face your self! You will read perhaps with smiles: you will possibly praise the ingenuity: you will talk, with a lip schooled against the slightest quiver, of some bit of pathos, and say that it is well done. Yet why is it well done ?— only because it is stolen from your very life and heart. It is good, because it is so common :—ingenious, because it is so honest:-well-conceived, because it is not conceived at all. There are thousands of mole-eyed people, who count all passion in print-a lie :-people who will grow into a rage at trifles, and weep in the dark, and love in secret, and hope without mention, and cover it all under the cloak of what they call-propriety. I can see before me now some gray-haired old gentleman, very money-getting, very correct, very cleanly, who reads the morning paper with unction, and his Bible with determination: who listens to dull sermons with patience, and who prays with quiet self-applause,—and yet there are moments belonging to his life, when his curdled affections yearn for something that they have not, when his avarice oversteps all the commandments, when his pride builds castles full of splendor; and yet put this before his eye, and he reads with the most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant fiction, what cannot be proved to the elders. We do not like to see our emotions unriddled: it is not agreeable to the proud man to find his weaknesses exposed it is shocking to the disappointed lover to see |