Dreams | Page 2

them on and on.
And when they came beyond, into the land of sunshine and flowers,
strangely the great eyes lit up, and dimples broke out upon the face.
Brightly laughing, it ran over the soft grass; gathered honey from the
hollow tree; and brought it them on the palm of its hand; carried them
water in the leaves of the lily, and gathered flowers and wreathed them
round their heads, softly laughing all the while. He touched them as
their Joy had touched them, but his fingers clung more tenderly.
So they wandered on, through the dark lands and the light, always with
that little brave smiling one between them. Sometimes they
remembered that first radiant Joy, and whispered to themselves, "Oh!
could we but find him also!"
At last they came to where Reflection sits; that strange old woman who
has always one elbow on her knee, and her chin in her hand, and who
steals light out of the past to shed it on the future.
And Life and Love cried out, "O wise one! tell us: when first we met, a
lovely radiant thing belonged to us--gladness without a tear, sunshine
without a shade. Oh! how did we sin that we lost it? Where shall we go
that we may find it?"
And she, the wise old woman, answered, "To have it back, will you
give up that which walks beside you now?"
And in agony Love and Life cried, "No!"
"Give up this!" said Life. "When the thorns have pierced me, who will
suck the poison out? When my head throbs, who will lay his tiny hands
upon it and still the beating? In the cold and the dark, who will warm
my freezing heart?"

And Love cried out, "Better let me die! Without Joy I can live; without
this I cannot. Let me rather die, not lose it!"
And the wise old woman answered, "O fools and blind! What you once
had is that which you have now! When Love and Life first meet, a
radiant thing is born, without a shade. When the roads begin to roughen,
when the shades begin to darken, when the days are hard, and the
nights cold and long--then it begins to change. Love and Life WILL not
see it, WILL not know it--till one day they start up suddenly, crying, 'O
God! O God! we have lost it! Where is it?' They do not understand that
they could not carry the laughing thing unchanged into the desert, and
the frost, and the snow. They do not know that what walks beside them
still is the Joy grown older. The grave, sweet, tender thing--warm in the
coldest snows, brave in the dreariest deserts--its name is Sympathy; it is
the Perfect Love."
South Africa.

II. THE HUNTER.
In certain valleys there was a hunter. Day by day he went to hunt for
wild-fowl in the woods; and it chanced that once he stood on the shores
of a large lake. While he stood waiting in the rushes for the coming of
the birds, a great shadow fell on him, and in the water he saw a
reflection. He looked up to the sky; but the thing was gone. Then a
burning desire came over him to see once again that reflection in the
water, and all day he watched and waited; but night came and it had not
returned. Then he went home with his empty bag, moody and silent.
His comrades came questioning about him to know the reason, but he
answered them nothing; he sat alone and brooded. Then his friend came
to him, and to him he spoke.
"I have seen today," he said, "that which I never saw before--a vast
white bird, with silver wings outstretched, sailing in the everlasting
blue. And now it is as though a great fire burnt within my breast. It was
but a sheen, a shimmer, a reflection in the water; but now I desire

nothing more on earth than to hold her."
His friend laughed.
"It was but a beam playing on the water, or the shadow of your own
head. Tomorrow you will forget her," he said.
But tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow the hunter walked alone.
He sought in the forest and in the woods, by the lakes and among the
rushes, but he could not find her. He shot no more wild fowl; what
were they to him?
"What ails him?" said his comrades.
"He is mad," said one.
"No; but he is worse," said another; "he would see that which none of
us have seen, and make himself a wonder."
"Come, let us forswear his company," said all.
So the hunter walked alone.
One night, as he wandered in the shade, very heartsore and weeping, an