Dream Life | Page 6

heart in a man to be stirred; but every
stir creates a new combination of feeling, that like the turn of a
kaleidoscope will show some fresh color or form.

A bachelor, to be sure, has a marvellous advantage in this; and with the
tenderest influences once anchored in the bay of marriage, there is little
disposition to scud off under each pleasant breeze of feeling. Nay, I can
even imagine--perhaps somewhat captiously--that after marriage,
feeling would become a habit, a rich and holy habit certainly, but yet a
habit, which weakens the omnivorous grasp of the affections, and
schools one to a unity of emotion that doubts and ignores the
promptness and variety of impulse which we bachelors possess.
My aunt nodded again.
Could it be that she approved what I had been saying? I hardly knew.
Poor old lady,--she did not know herself. She was asleep!

II.
With my Reader.
Having 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 better 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 fulness. 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
lifetime, 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 flood,--waving with grain, and with the feathery
blossoms of the grass, and golden buttercups, 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