DREAMS By Jerome K. Jerome The most extraordinary dream I ever had was one in which I fancied that, as I was going into a theater, the cloak-room attendant stopped me inthe lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me. I was not surprised; indeed, my acquaintanceship with theater harpieswould prevent my feeling any surprise at such a demand, even in mywaking moments; but I was, I must honestly confess, considerablyannoyed. It was not the payment of the cloak-room fee that I so muchminded--I offered to give that to the man then and there. It was theparting with my legs that I objected to. I said I had never heard of such a rule being attempted to be put inforce at any respectable theater before, and that I considered it a mostabsurd and vexatious regulation. I also said I should write to The Timesabout it. The man replied that he was very sorry, but that those were hisinstructions. People complained that they could not get to and fromtheir seats comfortably, because other people's legs were always inthe way; and it had, therefore, been decided that, in future, everybodyshould leave their legs outside. It seemed to me that the management, in making this order, had clearlygone beyond their legal right; and, under ordinary circumstances, Ishould have disputed it. Being present, however, more in thecharacter of a guest than in that of a patron, I hardly like to make adisturbance; and so I sat down and meekly prepared to comply with thedemand. I had never before known that the human leg did unscrew. I had alwaysthought it was a fixture. But the man showed me how to undo them, and Ifound that they came off quite easily. The discovery did not surprise me any more than the original requestthat I should take them off had done. Nothing does surprise one in adream. I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at allsurprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, Ithought, and to wish me "Good-by!" They all came, and were all verypleasant; but they were not in the least astonished--not one ofthem. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of themost-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world. They bore the calamity, besides, with an amount of stoicism that wouldhave done credit to a Spartan father. There was no fuss, no scene. Onthe contrary, an atmosphere of mild cheerfulness prevailed. Yet they were very kind. Somebody--an uncle, I think--left me a packetof sandwiches and a little something in a flask, in case, as he said, Ishould feel peckish on the scaffold. It is "those twin-jailers of the daring" thought, Knowledge andExperience, that teach us surprise. We are surprised and incredulouswhen, in novels and plays, we come across good men and women, becauseKnowledge and Experience have taught us how rare and problematical isthe existence of such people. In waking life, my friends and relationswould, of course, have been surprised at hearing that I had committed amurder, and was, in consequence, about to be hanged, because Knowledgeand Experience would have taught them that, in a country where thelaw is powerful and the police alert, the Christian citizen is usuallypretty successful in withstanding the voice of temptation, prompting himto commit crime of an illegal character. But into Dreamland, Knowledge and Experience do not enter. They staywithout, together with the dull, dead clay of which they form a part;while the freed brain, released from their narrowing tutelage, stealssoftly past the ebon gate, to wanton at its own sweet will among themazy paths that wind through the garden of Persephone. Nothing that it meets with in that eternal land astonishes it because, unfettered by the dense conviction of our waking mind, that noughtoutside the ken of our own vision can in this universe be, all thingsto it are possible and even probable. In dreams, we fly and wondernot--except that we never flew before. We go naked, yet are not ashamed, though we mildly wonder what the police are about that they do not stopus. We converse with our dead, and think it was unkind that they didnot come back to us before. In dreams, there happens that which humanlanguage cannot tell. In dreams, we see "the light that never was on seaor land, " we hear the sounds that never yet were heard by waking ears. It is only in sleep that true imagination ever stirs within us. Awake, we never imagine anything; we merely alter, vary, or transpose. We giveanother twist to the kaleidoscope of the things we see around us, andobtain another pattern; but not one of us has ever added one tiniestpiece of new glass to the toy. A Dean Swift sees one race of people smaller, and another race of peoplelarger than the race of people that live down his own streets. And healso sees a land where the horses take the place of men. A Bulwer Lyttonlays the scene of one of his novels inside the earth instead of outside. A Rider Haggard introduces us to a lady whose age is a few years morethan the average woman would care to confess to; and pictures crabslarger than the usual shilling or eighteen-penny size. The number of socalled imaginative writers who visit the moon is legion, and for allthe novelty that they find, when they get there, they might just as wellhave gone to Putney. Others are continually drawing for us visions ofthe world one hundred or one thousand years hence. There is always adepressing absence of human nature about the place; so much so, that onefeels great consolation in the thought, while reading, that we ourselvesshall be comfortably dead and buried before the picture can be realized. In these prophesied Utopias everybody is painfully good and clean andhappy, and all the work is done by electricity. There is somewhat too much electricity, for my taste, in these worldsto come. One is reminded of those pictorial enamel-paint advertisementsthat one sees about so often now, in which all the members of anextensive household are represented as gathered together in one room, spreading enamel-paint over everything they can lay their hands upon. The old man is on a step-ladder, daubing the walls and ceiling with"cuckoo's-egg green, " while the parlor-maid and the cook are on theirknees, painting the floor with "sealing-wax red. " The old lady is doingthe picture frames in "terra cotta. " The eldest daughter and her youngman are making sly love in a corner over a pot of "high art yellow, "with which, so soon as they have finished wasting their time, theywill, it is manifest, proceed to elevate the piano. Younger brothersand sisters are busy freshening up the chairs and tables with"strawberry-jam pink" and "jubilee magenta. " Every blessed thing in thatroom is being coated with enamel paint, from the sofa to the fire-irons, from the sideboard to the eight-day clock. If there is any paint leftover, it will be used up for the family Bible and the canary. It is claimed for this invention that a little child can make as muchmess with it as can a grown-up person, and so all the children ofthe family are represented in the picture as hard at work, enamelingwhatever few articles of furniture and household use the graspingselfishness of their elders has spared to them. One is painting thetoasting fork in a "skim-milk blue, " while another is giving aestheticalvalue to the Dutch oven by means of a new shade of art green. Thebootjack is being renovated in "old gold, " and the baby is sitting onthe floor, smothering its own cradle with "flush-upon-a-maiden's cheekpeach color. " One feels that the thing is being overdone. That family, before anothermonth is gone, will be among the strongest opponents of enamel paintthat the century has produced. Enamel paint will be the ruin of thatonce happy home. Enamel paint has a cold, glassy, cynical appearance. Its presence everywhere about the place will begin to irritate the oldman in the course of a week or so. He will call it, "This damn'd stickystuff!" and will tell the wife that he wonders she didn't paint herselfand the children with it while she was about it. She will reply, in anexasperatingly quiet tone of voice, that she does like that. Perhaps hewill say next, that she did not warn him against it, and tell him whatan idiot he was making of himself, spoiling the whole house with hisfoolish fads. Each one will persist that it was the other one who firstsuggested the absurdity, and they will sit up in bed and quarrel aboutit every night for a month. The children having acquired a taste for smudging the concoction about, and there being nothing else left untouched in the house, will try toenamel the cat; and then there will be bloodshed, and broken windows, and spoiled infants, and sorrows and yells. The smell of the paint willmake everybody ill; and the servants will give notice. Tradesmen'sboys will lean up against places that are not dry and get their clothesenameled and claim compensation. And the baby will suck the paint offits cradle and have fits. But the person that will suffer most will, of course, be the eldestdaughter's young man. The eldest daughter's young man is alwaysunfortunate. He means well, and he tries hard. His great ambition isto make the family love him. But fate is ever against him, and he onlysucceeds in gaining their undisguised contempt. The fact of his being"gone" on their Emily is, of itself, naturally sufficient to stamp himas an imbecile in the eyes of Emily's brothers and sisters. The fatherfinds him slow, and thinks the girl might have done better; while thebest that his future mother-in-law (his sole supporter) can say for himis, that he seems steady. There is only one thing that prompts the family to tolerate him, andthat is the reflection that he is going to take Emily away from them. On that understanding they put up with him. The eldest daughter's young man, in this particular case, will, youmay depend upon it, choose that exact moment when the baby's life ishovering in the balance, and the cook is waiting for her wages withher box in the hall, and a coal-heaver is at the front door with apoliceman, making a row about the damage to his trousers, to come in, smiling, with a specimen pot of some new high art, squashed-tomato-shadeenamel paint, and suggest that they should try it on the old man's pipe. Then Emily will go off into hysterics, and Emily's male progenitor willfirmly but quietly lead that ill-starred yet true-hearted young man tothe public side of the garden-gate; and the engagement will be "off. " Too much of anything is a mistake, as the man said when his wifepresented him with four new healthy children in one day. We shouldpractice moderation in all matters. A little enamel paint would havebeen good. They might have enameled the house inside and out, and haveleft the furniture alone. Or they might have colored the furniture, andlet the house be. But an entirely and completely enameled home--ahome, such as enamel-paint manufacturers love to picture on theiradvertisements, over which the yearning eye wanders in vain, seeking onesingle square inch of un-enameled matter--is, I am convinced, a mistake. It may be a home that, as the testimonials assure us, will easily wash. It may be an "artistic" home; but the average man is not yet educated upto the appreciation of it. The average man does not care for high art. At a certain point, the average man gets sick of high art. So, in these coming Utopias, in which out unhappy grandchildren willhave to drag out their colorless existence, there will be too muchelectricity. They will grow to loathe electricity. Electricity is going to light them, warm them, carry them, doctor them, cook for them, execute them, if necessary. They are going to be weanedon electricity, rocked in their cradles by electricity, slapped byelectricity, ruled and regulated and guided by electricity, buried byelectricity. I may be wrong, but I rather think they are going to behatched by electricity. In the new world of our progressionist teachers, it is electricity thatis the real motive-power. The men and women are only marionettes--workedby electricity. But it was not to speak of the electricity in them, but of theoriginality in them, that I referred to these works of fiction. Thereis no originality in them whatever. Human thought is incapable oforiginality. No man ever yet imagined a new thing--only some variationor extension of an old thing. The sailor, when he was asked what he would do with a fortune, promptlyreplied: "Buy all the rum and 'baccy there is in the world. " "And what after that?" they asked him. "Eh?" "What would you buy after that--after you had bought up all the rum andtobacco there was in the world--what would you buy then?" "After that? Oh! 'um!" (a long pause). "Oh!" (with inspiration) "why, more 'baccy!" Rum and tobacco he knew something of, and could therefore imagine about. He did not know any other luxuries, therefore he could not conceive ofany others. So if you ask one of these Utopian-dreaming gentry what, after they hadsecured for their world all the electricity there was in the Universe, and after every mortal thing in their ideal Paradise, was done and saidand thought by electricity, they could imagine as further necessary tohuman happiness, they would probably muse for awhile, and then reply, "More electricity. " They know electricity. They have seen the electric light, and heard ofelectric boats and omnibuses. They have possibly had an electric shockat a railway station for a penny. Therefore, knowing that electricity does three things, they can go onand "imagine" electricity doing three hundred things, and the very greatones among them can imagine it doing three thousand things; but forthem, or anybody else, to imagine a new force, totally unconnectedwith and different from anything yet known in nature, would be utterlyimpossible. Human thought is not a firework, ever shooting off fresh forms andshapes as it burns; it is a tree, growing very slowly--you can watch itlong and see no movement--very silently, unnoticed. It was planted inthe world many thousand years ago, a tiny, sickly plant. And men guardedit and tended it, and gave up life and fame to aid its growth. Inthe hot days of their youth, they came to the gate of the garden andknocked, begging to be let in, and to be counted among the gardeners. And their young companions without called to them to come back, and playthe man with bow and spear, and win sweet smiles from rosy lips, andtake their part amid the feast, and dance, not stoop with wrinkledbrows, at weaklings' work. And the passers by mocked them and calledshame, and others cried out to stone them. And still they stayed therelaboring, that the tree might grow a little, and they died and wereforgotten. And the tree grew fair and strong. The storms of ignorance passed overit, and harmed it not. The fierce fires of superstition soared aroundit; but men leaped into the flames and beat them back, perishing, andthe tree grew. With the sweat of their brow have men nourished its greenleaves. Their tears have moistened the earth about it. With their bloodthey have watered its roots. The seasons have come and passed, and the tree has grown and flourished. And its branches have spread far and high, and ever fresh shoots arebursting forth, and ever new leaves unfolding to the light. But theyare all part of the one tree--the tree that was planted on the firstbirthday of the human race. The stem that bears them springs from thegnarled old trunk that was green and soft when white-haired Time was alittle child; the sap that feeds them is drawn up through the roots thattwine and twist about the bones of the ages that are dead. The human mind can no more produce an original thought than a tree canbear an original fruit. As well might one cry for an original note inmusic as expect an original idea from a human brain. One wishes our friends, the critics, would grasp this simple truth, andleave off clamoring for the impossible, and being shocked because theydo not get it. When a new book is written, the high-class critic opensit with feelings of faint hope, tempered by strong conviction of comingdisappointment. As he pores over the pages, his brow darkens withvirtuous indignation, and his lip curls with the Godlike contempt thatthe exceptionally great critic ever feels for everybody in this world, who is not yet dead. Buoyed up by a touching, but totally fallacious, belief that he is performing a public duty, and that the rest of thecommunity is waiting in breathless suspense to learn his opinion of thework in question, before forming any judgment concerning it themselves, he, nevertheless, wearily struggles through about a third of it. Thenhis long-suffering soul revolts, and he flings it aside with a cry ofdespair. "Why, there is no originality whatever in this, " he says. "This book istaken bodily from the Old Testament. It is the story of Adam and Eve allover again. The hero is a mere man! with two arms, two legs, and a head(so called). Why, it is only Moses's Adam under another name! And theheroine is nothing but a woman! and she is described as beautiful, andas having long hair. The author may call her 'Angelina, ' or any othername he chooses; but he has evidently, whether he acknowledges itor not, copied her direct from Eve. The characters are barefacedplagiarisms from the book of Genesis! Oh! to find an author withoriginality!" One spring I went a walking tour in the country. It was a gloriousspring. Not the sort of spring they give us in these miserable times, under this shameless government--a mixture of east wind, blizzard, snow, rain, slush, fog, frost, hail, sleet and thunder-storms--but a sunny, blue-sky'd, joyous spring, such as we used to have regularly every yearwhen I was a young man, and things were different. It was an exceptionally beautiful spring, even for those golden days;and as I wandered through the waking land, and saw the dawning of thecoming green, and watched the blush upon the hawthorn hedge, deepeningeach day beneath the kisses of the sun, and looked up at the proud oldmother trees, dandling their myriad baby buds upon their strong fondarms, holding them high for the soft west wind to caress as he passedlaughing by, and marked the primrose yellow creep across the carpet ofthe woods, and saw the new flush of the field and saw the new light onthe hills, and heard the new-found gladness of the birds, and heardfrom copse and farm and meadow the timid callings of the little new-bornthings, wondering to find themselves alive, and smelt the freshness ofthe earth, and felt the promise in the air, and felt a strong hand inthe wind, my spirit rose within me. Spring had come to me also, andstirred me with a strange new life, with a strange new hope I, too, was part of nature, and it was spring! Tender leaves and blossoms wereunfolding from my heart. Bright flowers of love and gratitude wereopening round its roots. I felt new strength in all my limbs. New bloodwas pulsing through my veins. Nobler thoughts and nobler longings werethrobbing through my brain. As I walked, Nature came and talked beside me, and showed me the worldand myself, and the ways of God seemed clearer. It seemed to me a pity that all the beautiful and precious thoughts andideas that were crowding in upon me should be lost to my fellow-men, andso I pitched my tent at a little cottage, and set to work to write themdown then and there as they came to me. "It has been complained of me, " I said to myself, "that I do not writeliterary and high class work--at least, not work that is exceptionallyliterary and high-class. This reproach shall be removed. I will writean article that shall be a classic. I have worked for the ordinary, every-day reader. It is right that I should do something now to improvethe literature of my beloved country. " And I wrote a grand essay--though I say it who should not, though Idon't see why I shouldn't--all about spring, and the way it made youfeel, and what it made you think. It was simply crowded with elevatedthoughts and high-class ideas and cultured wit, was that essay. Therewas only one fault about that essay: it was too brilliant. I wantedcommonplace relief. It would have exhausted the average reader; so muchcleverness would have wearied him. I wish I could remember some of the beautiful things in that essay, andhere set them down; because then you would be able to see what theywere like for yourselves, and that would be so much more simpler thanmy explaining to you how beautiful they were. Unfortunately, however, Icannot now call to mind any of them. I was very proud of this essay, and when I got back to town I called ona very superior friend of mine, a critic, and read it to him. I do notcare for him to see any of my usual work, because he really is a verysuperior person indeed, and the perusal of it appears to give him painsinside. But this article, I thought, would do him good. "What do you think of it?" I asked, when I had finished. "Splendid, " he replied, "excellently arranged. I never knew you wereso well acquainted with the works of the old writers. Why, there isscarcely a classic of any note that you have not quoted from. Butwhere--where, " he added, musing, "did you get that last idea but twofrom? It's the only one I don't seem to remember. It isn't a bit of yourown, is it?" He said that, if so, he should advise me to leave it out. Not that itwas altogether bad, but that the interpolation of a modern thought amongso unique a collection of passages from the ancients seemed to spoil thescheme. And he enumerated the various dead-and-buried gentlemen from whom heappeared to think I had collated my article. "But, " I replied, when I had recovered my astonishment sufficiently tospeak, "it isn't a collection at all. It is all original. I wrote thethoughts down as they came to me. I have never read any of these peopleyou mention, except Shakespeare. " Of course Shakespeare was bound to be among them. I am getting todislike that man so. He is always being held up before us young authorsas a model, and I do hate models. There was a model boy at our school, I remember, Henry Summers; and it was just the same there. It wascontinually, "Look at Henry Summers! he doesn't put the prepositionbefore the verb, and spell business b-i-z!" or, "Why can't you writelike Henry Summers? He doesn't get the ink all over the copy-book andhalf-way up his back!" We got tired of this everlasting "Look at HenrySummers!" after a while, and so, one afternoon, on the way home, a fewof us lured Henry Summers up a dark court; and when he came out again hewas not worth looking at. Now it is perpetually, "Look at Shakespeare!" "Why don't you write likeShakespeare?" "Shakespeare never made that joke. Why don't you joke likeShakespeare?" If you are in the play-writing line it is still worse for you. "Whydon't you write plays like Shakespeare's?" they indignantly say. "Shakespeare never made his comic man a penny steamboat captain. ""Shakespeare never made his hero address the girl as 'ducky. ' Why don'tyou copy Shakespeare?" If you do try to copy Shakespeare, they tell youthat you must be a fool to attempt to imitate Shakespeare. Oh, shouldn't I like to get Shakespeare up our street, and punch him! "I cannot help that, " replied my critical friend--to return to ourprevious question--"the germ of every thought and idea you have gotin that article can be traced back to the writers I have named. Ifyou doubt it, I will get down the books, and show you the passages foryourself. " But I declined the offer. I said I would take his word for it, and wouldrather not see the passages referred to. I felt indignant. "If, " asI said, "these men--these Platos and Socrateses and Ciceros andSophocleses and Aristophaneses and Aristotles and the rest of them hadbeen taking advantage of my absence to go about the world spoiling mybusiness for me, I would rather not hear any more about them. " And I put on my hat and came out, and I have never tried to writeanything original since. I dreamed a dream once. (It is the sort of thing a man would dream. You cannot very well dream anything else, I know. But the phrase soundspoetical and biblical, and so I use it. ) I dreamed that I was in astrange country--indeed, one might say an extraordinary country. It wasruled entirely by critics. The people in this strange land had a very high opinion ofcritics--nearly as high an opinion of critics as the critics themselveshad, but not, of course, quite--that not being practicable--and they hadagreed to be guided in all things by the critics. I stayed some years inthat land. But it was not a cheerful place to live in, so I dreamed. There were authors in this country, at first, and they wrote books. Butthe critics could find nothing original in the books whatever, and saidit was a pity that men, who might be usefully employed hoeing potatoes, should waste their time and the time of the critics, which was of stillmore importance, in stringing together a collection of platitudes, familiar to every school-boy, and dishing up old plots and stories thathad already been cooked and recooked for the public until everybody hadbeen surfeited with them. And the writers read what the critics said and sighed, and gave upwriting books, and went off and hoed potatoes; as advised. They hadhad no experience in hoeing potatoes, and they hoed very badly; andthe people whose potatoes they hoed strongly recommended them to leavehoeing potatoes, and to go back and write books. But you can't do whateverybody advises. There were artists also in this strange world, at first, and theypainted pictures, which the critics came and looked at througheyeglasses. "Nothing whatever original in them, " said the critics; "same old colors, same old perspective and form, same old sunset, same old sea and land, and sky and figures. Why do these poor men waste their time, paintingpictures, when they might be so much more satisfactorily employed onladders painting houses?" Nothing, by the by, you may have noticed, troubles your critic more thanthe idea that the artist is wasting his time. It is the waste of timethat vexes the critic; he has such an exalted idea of the value of otherpeople's time. "Dear, dear me!" he says to himself, "why, in the timethe man must have taken to paint this picture or to write this book, he might have blacked fifteen thousand pairs of boots, or have carriedfifteen thousand hods of mortar up a ladder. This is how the time of theworld is lost!" It never occurs to him that, but for that picture or book, the artistwould, in all probability, have been mouching about with a pipe in hismouth, getting into trouble. It reminds me of the way people used to talk to me when I was a boy. I would be sitting, as good as gold, reading "The Pirate's Lair, " whensome cultured relative would look over my shoulder and say: "Bah! whatare you wasting your time with rubbish for? Why don't you go and dosomething useful?" and would take the book away from me. Upon which Iwould get up, and go out to "do something useful;" and would come homean hour afterward, looking like a bit out of a battle picture, havingtumbled through the roof of Farmer Bate's greenhouse and killed acactus, though totally unable to explain how I came to be on the roof ofFarmer Bate's greenhouse. They had much better have left me alone, lostin "The Pirate's Lair!" The artists in this land of which I dreamed left off painting pictures, after hearing what the critics said, and purchased ladders, and went offand painted houses. Because, you see, this country of which I dreamed was not one of thosevulgar, ordinary countries, such as exist in the waking world, wherepeople let the critics talk as much as ever they like, and nobody paysthe slightest attention to what they say. Here, in this strange land, the critics were taken seriously, and their advice followed. As for the poets and sculptors, they were very soon shut up. The idea ofany educated person wanting to read modern poetry when he could obtainHomer, or caring to look at any other statue while there was still someof the Venus de Medicis left, was too absurd. Poets and sculptors wereonly wasting their time. What new occupation they were recommended to adopt, I forget. Somecalling they knew nothing whatever about, and that they were totallyunfitted for, of course. The musicians tried their art for a little while, but they, too, wereof no use. "Merely a repetition of the same notes in differentcombinations, " said the critics. "Why will people waste their timewriting unoriginal music, when they might be sweeping crossings?" One man had written a play. I asked what the critics had said about him. They showed me his tomb. Then, there being no more artists or _litterateurs_ or dramatists ormusicians left for their beloved critics to criticise, the generalpublic of this enlightened land said to themselves, "Why should not ourcritics come and criticise us? Criticism is useful to a man. Have wenot often been told so? Look how useful it has been to the artists andwriters--saved the poor fellows from wasting their time? Why shouldn'twe have some of its benefits?" They suggested the idea to the critics, and the critics thought it anexcellent one, and said they would undertake the job with pleasure. Onemust say for the critics that they never shirk work. They will sit andcriticise for eighteen hours a day, if necessary, or even, if quiteunnecessary, for the matter of that. You can't give them too much tocriticise. They will criticise everything and everybody in this world. They will criticise everything in the next world, too, when they getthere. I expect poor old Pluto has a lively time with them all, as itis. So, when a man built a house, or a farm-yard hen laid an egg, thecritics were asked in to comment on it. They found that none of thehouses were original. On every floor were passages that seemed merecopies from passages in other houses. They were all built on the samehackneyed plan; cellars underneath, ground floor level with the street, attic at the top. No originality anywhere! So, likewise with the eggs. Every egg suggested reminiscences of othereggs. It was heartrending work. The critics criticised all things. When a young couple fell in love, they each, before thinking of marriage, called upon the critics for acriticism of the other one. Needless to say that, in the result, no marriage ever came of it. "My dear young lady, " the critics would say, after the inspection hadtaken place, "I can discover nothing new whatever about the young man. You would simply be wasting your time in marrying him. " Or, to the young man, it would be: "Oh, dear, no! Nothing attractive about the girl at all. Who onearth gave you that notion? Simply a lovely face and figure, angelicdisposition, beautiful mind, stanch heart, noble character. Why, theremust have been nearly a dozen such girls born into the world since itscreation. You would be only wasting your time loving her. " They criticised the birds for their hackneyed style of singing, and theflowers for their hackneyed scents and colors. They complained of theweather that it lacked originality--(true, they had not lived out anEnglish spring)--and found fault with the Sun because of the sameness ofhis methods. They criticised the babies. When a fresh infant was published in ahouse, the critics would call in a body to pass their judgment upon it, and the young mother would bring it down for them to sample. "Did you ever see a child anything like that in this world before?" shewould say, holding it out to them. "Isn't it a wonderful baby? _You_never saw a child with legs like that, I know. Nurse says he's the mostextraordinary baby she ever attended. Bless him!" But the critics did not think anything of it. "Tut, tut, " they would reply, "there is nothing extraordinary aboutthat child--no originality whatever. Why, it's exactly like every otherbaby--bald head, red face, big mouth, and stumpy nose. Why, that's onlya weak imitation of the baby next door. It's a plagiarism, that's whatthat child is. You've been wasting your time, madam. If you can't doanything more original than that, we should advise you to give up thebusiness altogether. " That was the end of criticism in that strange land. "Oh! look here, we've had enough of you and your originality, " said thepeople to the critics, after that. "Why, _you_ are not original, whenone comes to think of it, and your criticisms are not original. You'veall of you been saying exactly the same thing ever since the time ofSolomon. We are going to drown you and have a little peace. " "What, drown a critic!" cried the critics, "never heard of such amonstrous proceeding in our lives!" "No, we flatter ourselves it is an original idea, " replied the public, brutally. "You ought to be charmed with it. Out you come!" So they took the critics out and drowned them, and then passed a shortact, making criticism a capital offense. After that, the art and literature of the country followed, somewhat, the methods of the quaint and curious school, but the land, notwithstanding, was a much more cheerful place to live in, I dreamed. But I never finished telling you about the dream in which I thought Ileft my legs behind me when I went into a certain theater. I dreamed that the ticket the man gave me for my legs was No. 19, and Iwas worried all through the performance for fear No. 61 should get holdof them, and leave me his instead. Mine are rather a fine pair of legs, and I am, I confess, a little proud of them--at all events, I preferthem to anybody else's. Besides, number sixty-one's might be a skinnypair, and not fit me. It quite spoiled my evening, fretting about this. Another extraordinary dream I had was one in which I dreamed that Iwas engaged to be married to my Aunt Jane. That was not, however, theextraordinary part of it; I have often known people to dream things likethat. I knew a man who once dreamed that he was actually married to hisown mother-in-law! He told me that never in his life had he loved thealarm clock with more deep and grateful tenderness than he did thatmorning. The dream almost reconciled him to being married to his realwife. They lived quite happily together for a few days, after thatdream. No; the extraordinary part of my dream was, that I knew it was a dream. "What on earth will uncle say to this engagement?" I thought to myself, in my dream. "There's bound to be a row about it. We shall have a dealof trouble with uncle, I feel sure. " And this thought quite troubled meuntil the sweet reflection came: "Ah! well, it's only a dream. " And I made up my mind that I would wake up as soon as uncle found outabout the engagement, and leave him and Aunt Jane to fight the matterout between themselves. It is a very great comfort, when the dream grows troubled and alarming, to feel that it is only a dream, and to know that we shall awake soonand be none the worse for it. We can dream out the foolish perplexitywith a smile then. Sometimes the dream of life grows strangely troubled and perplexing, andthen he who meets dismay the bravest is he who feels that the fretfulplay is but a dream--a brief, uneasy dream of three score years and ten, or thereabouts, from which, in a little while, he will awake--at least, he dreams so. How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams--waking dreams, Imean--the dreams that we call "castles in the air, " built by the kindlyhands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing hisfootsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desertsand and die. It is the mirage of distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of carrots fastened an inch beyond the donkey's nose, seems always just within our reach, if only we will gallop fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road of Life. Providence, like a father with a tired child, lures us ever along theway with tales and promises, until, at the frowning gate that ends theroad, we shrink back, frightened. Then, promises still more sweet hestoops and whispers in our ear, and timid yet partly reassured, andtrying to hide our fears, we gather up all that is left of our littlestock of hope and, trusting yet half afraid, push out our groping feetinto the darkness.