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 I reckon it all a poet's fiction: there are times when such dreams come over you like a summer cloud, and almost stifle you with their warmth.
Seek as you will for increase of lands or moneys, and there are moments when a spark of some giant mind will flash over your cravings, and wake your soul suddenly to a quick, and yearning sense of that influence which is begotten of intellect; and you task your dreams—as I have copied them here—to build before you the pleasures of such a renown.
I care not how worldly you may be: there are times when all distinctions seem like dust, and when at the graves of the great, you dream of a coming country, where your proudest hopes shall be dimmed forever.
Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker, you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is butadream. Yet youcall this fiction: you stave off the thoughts in print which come over you in reverie. You will not admit to the eye what is true to the heart. Poor weakling, and worldling,—you are not strong enough to face yourself!
