Dreamland | Page 4

welcome the night.
He got upon his feet as well as he could, for he was very stiff with lying so long, and stumbled on toward some dark nook or cranny where he could huddle unseen until the morning; his head full of plans for the morrow, and his heart beating high with courage and hope.
He would dream no more, but labor. He would work at the first thing that came to hand, and then, perhaps, that wonderful thing which the voice had called inspiration would come to him, and he would be able to mount to heaven on it and bring down to earth some of the glorious things he saw. He thought inspiration must be some sort of a magical ladder, that was invisible to all but those given special sight to see and power to use it. If he ever caught a glimpse of it he intended to take hold at once and climb straight up to the blessed regions above; and dreaming of all he would see there, he fell asleep.
In the morning he was awake bright and early, and stretching himself with a long-drawn yawn, set out to find some way of procuring for himself a breakfast. First at one shop-door and then at another he stopped, popping in his shaggy head and asking the man inside, "Give me a job, Mister?" and being in reply promptly invited to "clear out!"
But it took more than this to discourage Larry, heartened as he was by the remembrance of his visions of the day before; and on and on he went, until, at last, in answer to his question--and just as he was about to withdraw his head from the door of the express-office into which he had popped it a moment before--he was bidden to say what it was he could do. Almost too surprised at the change in greeting to be able to reply, he stumbled back into the place and stood a moment in rather stupid silence before his questioner.
"Well, ain't yer got no tongue in yer head, young feller? Seemed ter have a minute ago. Ef yer can't speak up no better 'n this, yer ain't the boy fer us."
But by this time Larry had recovered himself sufficiently to blurt out: "I kin lift an' haul an' run errants an' do all sorts o' work about the place. Won't ye try me, Mister? Lemme carry out that box ter show ye how strong I am;" and suiting the action to the words, he shouldered a heavy packing-case and was out upon the sidewalk and depositing it upon a wagon, already piled with trunks and luggage, before the man had time to reply.
When he returned to the door-step he was greeted with the grateful intelligence that he might stay a bit and see how he got along as an errand-boy if he liked; and, of course, liking, he started in at once upon his new office.
That was the beginning. It gave him occupation and, food, but scarcely more than that at first. He had no time for dreaming now, but often when he had a brief moment to himself would take out of his pocket the piece of chalk with which he marked the trunks he carried, and sketch with it upon some rough box-lid or other the picture of a face or form which he saw in his fancy; so that after a time he was known among the men as "the artist feller," and grew to have quite a little reputation among them.
How the rest came about even Larry himself found it hard to tell. But by and by he was drawing with pencil and pen, and selling his sketches for what he could get, buying now a brush and then some paints with the scanty proceeds, and working upon his bits of canvas with all the ardor of a Raphael himself.
A man sat before an easel in a crowded studio one day, give the last touch to a painting that stood before him. It pictured the figure of a lad, ragged and forlorn, lying asleep beneath some sheltering trees. At first that seems all there was to be seen upon the canvas; but if one looked closer one was able to discover another figure amid the vaporous, soft glooms of the place. It grew ever more distinct, until one had no difficulty in distinguishing the form of a maiden, fair and frail as a dream. She was bending over the slumbering body of the boy, as if to arouse him to life by the whispered words she was breathing against his cheek.
The artist scrawled his signature in the corner of his completed work and set the canvas in its frame, and then stood before it, scrutinizing it closely.
"'The Waking Soul!'--I wonder if