But this dream of last night was so vivid that this morning I cannot shake it from me.
I dreamed—ridiculously enough—that the whole world was at war, and that big and little nations were fighting.
In my dream the round earth hung before me against the background of the night, and red flames shot from every part.
I heard cries of anguish—men blinded by gases and crazed by suffering. I saw women dressed in black—a long procession stretching hideously from mist to mist—walking with erect heads, dry-eyed, for grief had starved them of tears. I saw ships sinking and a thousand arms raised for a moment above the waves. I saw children lying dead among their toys.
And I saw boys throw down their books and tools and go off with glad cries, and men I saw, grown gray with despair, staggering under heavy weights.
There were millions of dead upon the earth that hung before me, and I smelled the battlefield.
And I beheld one man—one hundred men—secure in an outlawed country—who looked from far windows—men bitter with disappointment—men who blasphemed of God, while their victims rotted in Flanders.
And in my dream it seemed that I did not have a sword, but that I, too, looked upon the battle from a place where there were no flames. I ran little errands for the war.
There is the familiar window—that dull outline across the room. Here is the accustomed door. The bed is set between. It was but a dream after all. And yet how it has shaken me!
Of course the dream was absurd. No man—no nation certainly—could be so mad. The whole whirling earth could not burn with fire. Until the final trumpet, no such calamity is possible. Thank God, it was but a dream, and I can continue today my peaceful occupation.
Calico, I'm told, is going up. I must protect our contracts.
ON GOING AFOOT
here is a tale that somewhere in the world there is a merry river that dances as often as it hears sweet music. The tale is not precise whether this river is neighbor to us or is a stream of the older world. "It dances at the noise of musick," so runs the legend, "for with musick it bubbles, dances and grows sandy." This tale may be the conceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morning and the freshness of the earth—Thomas Heywood could have written it or even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at the Mermaid—or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship of the god Pan, who is said to have piped along the streams. I offer my credence to the earlier origin as the more pleasing. And therefore on a country walk I observe the streams if by chance any of them shall fit the tale. Not yet have I seen Pan puffing his cheeks with melody on a streamside bank—by ill luck I squint short-sightedly—but I often hear melodies of such woodsy composition that surely they must issue from his pipe. The stream leaps gaily across the shallows that glitter with sunlight, and I am tempted to the agreeable suspicion that I have hit upon the very stream of the legend and that the god Pan sits hard by in the thicket and beats his shaggy hoof in rhythm. It is his song that the wind sings in the trees. If a bird sings in the meadow its tune is pitched to Pan's reedy obligato.
Whether or not this is true, I confess to a love of a stream. This may be merely an anжmic love of beauty, such as is commonly bred in townsfolk on a holiday, or it may descend from braver ancestors who once were anglers and played truant with hook and line. You may recall that the milk-women of Kent told Piscator when he came at the end of his day's fishing to beg a cup of red cow's milk, that anglers were "honest, civil, quiet men." I have, also, a habit of contemplation, which I am told is proper to an angler. I can lean longer than most across the railing of a country bridge if the water runs noisily on the stones. If I chance to come off a dusty road—unless hunger stirs me to an inn—I can listen for an hour, for of all sounds it is the most musical. When earth and air and water play in concert, which are the master musicians this side of the moon, surely their harmony rises above the music of the stars.
In a more familiar mood I throw stepping stones in the water to hear them splash, or I cram them in a dam to thwart the purpose of the stream, laying ever a higher stone when the water laps the top. I scoop out the sand and stones as if a mighty shipping begged for passage. Or I rest from this prodigious engineering upon my back and watch the white traffic of the clouds across the summer sky. The roots of an antique oak peep upon the flood as in the golden days of arden. Apple blossoms fall upon the water like the snow of a more kindly winter. A gay leaf puts out upon the channel like a painted galleon for far adventure. A twig sails off freighted with my drowsy thoughts. A branch of a willow dips in the stream and writes an endless trail of words in the running water. In these evil days when the whole fair world is trenched and bruised with war, what wisdom does it send to the valleys where men reside—what love and peace and gentleness—what promise of better days to come—that it makes this eternal stream its messenger!
And yet a stream is best if it is but an incident in travel—if it break the dusty afternoon and send one off refreshed. Rather than a place for fishing it invites one to bathe his feet. There are, indeed, persons so careful of their health as to assert that cold water endangers blisters. Theirs is a prudence to be neglected. Such persons had better leave their feet at home safely slippered on the fender. If one's feet go upon a holiday, is it fair that for fear of consequence they be kept housed in their shoes? Shall the toes sit inside their battered caravans while the legs and arms frisk outside? Is there such torture in a blister—even if the prevention be sure—to outweigh the pleasure of cold water running across the ankles?
It was but lately that I followed a road that lay off the general travel through a pleasant country of hills and streams. as the road was not a thoroughfare and journeyed no farther than the near-by town where I was to get my supper, it went at a lazy winding pace. If a dog barked it was in sleepy fashion. He yelped merely to check his loneliness. There could be no venom on his drowsy tooth. The very cows that fed along its fences were of a slower breed and more contemplative whisk of tail than are found upon the thoroughfares. Sheep patched the fields with gray and followed their sleepy banquet across the hills.
The country was laid out with farms—orchards and soft fields of grain that waved like a golden lake—but there were few farmhouses. In all the afternoon I passed but one person, a deaf man who asked for direction. When I cried out that I was a stranger, he held his hand to his ear, but his mouth fell open as if my words, denied by deafness from a proper portal, were offered here a service entrance. I spread my map before him and he put an ample thumb upon it. Then inquiring whether I had crossed a road with a red house upon it where his friend resided, he thanked me and walked off with such speed as his years had left him. Birds sang delightfully on the fences and in the field, yet I knew not their names. Shall one not enjoy a symphony without precise knowledge of the instrument that gives the tune? If an oboe sound a melody, must one bestow a special praise, with a knowledge of its function in the concert? or if a trombone please, must one know the brassy creature by its name? Rather, whether I listen to horns or birds, in my ignorance I bestow loosely a general approbation; yet is the song sweet.
All afternoon I walked with the sound of wind and water in my ears, and at night, when I had gained my journey's end and lay in bed, I heard beneath my window in the garden the music of a little runnel that was like a faint and pleasant echo of my hillside walk. I fell asleep to its soothing sound and its trickle made a pattern across my dreams.