Dream Life: A Fable of the Seasons

by Donald Grant Mitchell

"I have not loved the world, nor the world me."

As for Madge, the memory of her has been more wakeful, but less violent. To say nothing of occasional returns to the old homestead, when you have met her Nelly's letters not unfrequently drop a careless half-sentence that keeps her strangely in mind.

"Madge," she says, "is sitting by me with her work;" or, "You ought to see the little silk purse that Madge is knitting;" or,—speaking of some country rout,—"Madge was there in the sweetest dress you can imagine." All this will keep Madge in mind; not, it is true, in the ambitious moods, or in the frolics with Dalton; but in those odd half-hours that come stealing over one at twilight, laden with sweet memories of the days of old.

A new romantic admiration is started by those pale lady-faces which light up on a Sunday the gallery of the college chapel. An amiable and modest fancy gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very atmosphere of these courts, wakened with high metaphysic discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty and fineness; and you attach to the prettiest, that your eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden, and all the learning of her father—the professor. And as you lie half-wakeful and half-dreaming, through the long Divisions of the Doctor's morning discourse, the twinkling eyes in some corner of the gallery bear you pleasant company as you float down those streaming visions which radiate from you far over the track of the coming life.

But following very closely upon this comes a whole volume of street romance. There are prettily shaped figures that go floating at convenient hours for college observation along the thoroughfares of the town. And these figures come to be known, and the dresses, and the streets; and even the door-plate is studied. The hours are ascertained, by careful observation and induction, at which some particular figure is to be met,—or is to be seen at some low parlor-window, in white summer dress, with head leaning on the hand, very melancholy, and very dangerous. Perhaps her very card is stuck proudly into a corner of the mirror in the college-chamber. After this may come moonlight meetings at the gate, or long listenings to the plaintive lyrics that steal out of the parlor-windows, and that blur wofully the text of the Conic Sections.

Or perhaps she is under the fierce eye of some Cerberus of a schoolmistress, about whose grounds you prowl piteously, searching for small knot-holes in the surrounding board fence, through which little souvenirs of impassioned feeling may be thrust. Sonnets are written for the town papers, full of telling phrases, and with classic allusions and foot-notes which draw attention to some similar felicity of expression in Horace or Ovid. Correspondence may even be ventured on, enclosing locks of hair, and interchanging rings, and paper oaths of eternal fidelity.

But the old Cerberus is very wakeful: the letters fail; the lamp that used to glimmer for a sign among the sycamores is gone out; a stolen wave of a handkerchief, a despairing look, and tears,—which you fancy, but do not see,—make you miserable for long days.

The tyrant teacher, with no trace of compassion in her withered heart, reports you to the college authorities. There is a long lecture of admonition upon the folly of such dangerous practices; and if the offence be aggravated by some recent joviality with Dalton and the Senior, you are condemned to a month of exile with a country clergyman. There are a few tearful regrets over the painful tone of the home letters; but the bracing country air, and the pretty faces of the village girls, heal your heart—with fresh wounds.

The old Doctor sees dimly through his spectacles; and his pew gives a good look-out upon the smiling choir of singers. A collegian wears the honors of a stranger, and the country bucks stand but poor chance in contrast with your wonderful attainments in cravats and verses. But this fresh dream, odorous with its memories of sleigh-rides or lilac-blossoms, slips by, and yields again to the more ambitious dreams of the cloister.

In the prouder moments that come when you are more a man and less a boy,—with more of strategy and less of faith,—your thought of woman runs loftily; not loftily in the realm of virtue or goodness, but loftily on your new world-scale. The pride of intellect, that is thirsting in you, fashions ideal graces after a classic model. The heroines of fable are admired; and the soul is tortured with that intensity of passion which gleams through the broken utterances of Grecian tragedy.