I DREAMED I was in a great garden full of flowers, and beautiful trees. The lawns were smooth, with never a daisy to break the green of them, and the shadows in the moonlight lay dark upon the ground.
“For I was there at night, and there were many others with me, dream-people, who I couldn’t see. But I knew we were all gathered together to be put to some great test. I can see the night sky now above me, as I saw it in my dream, with the moon like a shining shield, and never a star.
“And the test we were put to was to count the flowers of the Solomon’s Seal.
“Do you know the plant, and the beauty of it? The flowers hang down in little bunches from a green stem that makes a rainbow span. I saw the white flowers as I bent down to seek them, and ten of them I counted as they hung there. And all the time that I was counting, there were small voices about me, like thin breaths of air.
“‘Count us, count us,’ they were saying; ‘different and yet the same; count us.’
“It seemed to me there might be some more flowers hidden among the leaves. And I turned the leaves back with my hands, seeking. I can feel the coolness, and the firmness, of them now. But I could find no more flowers than those ten. Yet the thin voices were still whispering, ‘Count us, count us.’
“Then in the great clearness of the moonlight I saw that everything in the garden had its shadow, every flower I had counted was shadowed black upon the ground; and together I made twenty, and the clamouring of the voices ceased. Then in my dream it seemed to me the time had come when we must answer. We must have been standing in a long line, for I heard the voices of the many who were there, coming nearer and nearer, like a soft wind blowing through a wood. ‘Ten—ten—ten—ten,’ sounded the answers, and some one who seemed to be standing at my shoulder said ‘Ten.’ But when my turn came, I was filled with the strength of a great spirit, and cried out so that my voice filled all the hollow of the sky.
“‘Twenty, I make it!’ I called out—‘Twenty! for substance is shadow, and shadow is substance, and what is—seems, and what seems—is.’
“I d’ know, I’m sure, if that makes sense or not, my dears; but I was given Solomon’s Seal for my wisdom.”