Dream Life

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Dream Life

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dream Life, by Donald G. Mitchell This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Dream Life A Fable Of The Seasons
Author: Donald G. Mitchell
Release Date: February 26, 2006 [EBook #17862]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DREAM LIFE:
A
FABLE OF THE SEASONS
BY
DONALD G. MITCHELL
---- We are such stuff As dreams are made of; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep
Tempest.
NEW YORK
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, AND COMPANY
1876.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by Charles Scribner & Co.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H.O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY

A NEW PREFACE.
Twelve years ago, this autumn, when I had finished the concluding chapters of this little book, I wrote a letter of Dedication to Washington Irving, and, forwarding it by mail to Sunnyside, begged his permission to print it. I think I shall gratify a rational curiosity of my readers (however much they may condemn my vanity) if I give his reply in full.
"My dear Sir,--
"Though I have a great disinclination in general to be the object of literary oblations and compliments, yet in the present instance I have enjoyed your writings with such peculiar relish, and been so drawn toward the author by the qualities of head and heart evinced in them, that I confess I feel gratified by a dedication, over-flattering as I may deem it, which may serve as an outward sign that we are cordially linked together in sympathies and friendship.
"I would only suggest that in your dedication you would omit the LL.D., a learned dignity urged upon me very much 'against the stomach of my sense,' and to which I have never laid claim.
"Ever, my dear sir, "Yours, very truly, "Washington Irving "Sunnyside, Nov. 1851."
I had been personally presented to Mr. Irving for the first time, only a year before, under the introduction of my good friend, Mr. Clark (the veteran Editor of the old Knickerbocker in its palmy days). Thereafter I had met him from time to time, and had paid a charming visit to his delightful home of Sunnyside. But it was after the date of the publication of this book and during the summer of 1852, that I saw Mr. Irving more familiarly, and came to appreciate more fully that charming bonhomie and geniality in his character which we all recognize so constantly in his writings. And if I set down here a few recollections of that pleasant intercourse, they will, I am sure, more than make good the place of the old letter of Dedication, and will serve to keep alive the association I wish to cherish between my little book and the name of the distinguished author who so kindly showed me his favor.
For the first time, after many years, Mr. Irving made a stay of a few weeks at Saratoga, in the summer of 1852. By good fortune, I chanced to occupy a room upon the same corridor of the hotel, within a few doors of his, and shared very many of his early morning walks to the "Spring." What at once struck me very forcibly in the course of these walks, was the rare alertness and minuteness of his observation: not a fair young face could dash past us in its drapery of muslin, but the eye of the old gentleman drank in all its freshness and beauty with the keen appetite and the grateful admiration of a boy; not a dowager brushed past us bedizened with finery, but he fastened the apparition in my memory with some piquant remark,--as the pin of an entomologist fastens a gaudy fly. No rheumatic old hero-invalid, battered in long wars with the doctors,--no droll marplot of a boy, could appear within range, but I could see in the changeful expression of my companion the admeasurement and quiet adjustment of the appeal which either made upon his sympathy or his humor. A flower, a tree, a burst of music, a country market-man hoisted upon his wagon of cabbages,--all these by turns caught and engaged his attention, however little they might interrupt the flow of his talk.
I ventured to ask on one occasion, if he had depended solely upon his memory for the thousand little descriptions of natural objects which occur in his books.
"Not wholly," he replied; and went on to tell me it had been his way, in the earlier days of his authorship, to