I wait for you—I have been waiting long:
Far off I hear the Driver’s tiny song——
Oh, Dream Coach! Come at last!
(From Knee-High to a Grasshopper.)
The Seven White Dreams of the King’s Little Daughter
When the Driver of the Dream Coach reached the last small star in the sky, he unharnessed his hundred misty horses and put them out to pasture in the great blue meadow of Heaven. It was well he reached the end of his journey when he did, for in another moment a mounting wave of sunlight and wind, rushing up from the world far below, blew out the silver-white flame of the star so that no one could follow the strange Driver and his strange Coach to their resting place.
Resting place? What a mistake! The Driver of the Dream Coach never rests. You see, there are so many things to do even when he is carrying no passengers. There are new dreams to invent: queer dreams, funny dreams, fairy dreams, goblin dreams, happy dreams, exciting dreams, short dreams, long dreams, brightly colored dreams, and dreams made out of shadows and mist that vanish as soon as one opens one’s eyes. Then there is the very bothersome matter of keeping the records straight, records of those who deserve good dreams, those who need cheering with ridiculous dreams, and those, alas, who have been bad and naughty and have to be punished (how the little Driver hates this!) with nightmares. It is hard to keep all those dreams from getting mixed up, there are so many of them. Indeed, sometimes, they do get mixed up, and a good child, who was meant to have a dream as pretty as a pansy or as funny as a frog, gets a nightmare by mistake. But the Driver of the Dream Coach tries as hard as he possibly can never to let this happen. He has so very much to do that he never would catch up with his work no matter how quickly his beautiful horses galloped from star to star, from world to world, if there was not some one to help him.
There are little angels who help the Driver of the Dream Coach.
In their gold and white book they keep a record of every one on earth.