And waddling is mirth-provoking to every daughter of Eve, and laughter is fatal to love.
17.
Not one word of the caballistic seven would I have written but for two very singular dreams which I had. And this is the way, so far as I can make out, that I chanced to dream the first one.
The line of Bishop Berkeley, to the effect that the star of empire is constantly moving west, is naturally a favorite with patriots in this country. It is in everybody’s mouth. I have heard it cited, you could not imagine how often; so often, to put it plainly, that I would undertake to reckon up on my fingers and toes the number of times I have not heard it. Western journalists, especially, see their way to quoting it so frequently that they keep it always in stock, electro-typed and ready for use at a moment’s notice (when a commercial traveller registers at the local hotel, for instance). Not a Weekly is set up as the organ of the pioneerest water-tank of a Western railway, but you shall see this verse figure in the first leader. Now it was this line which, though not the exciting cause of the first of my two dreams, gave direction to it, at least.
A friend had sent me a San Francisco paper, and meeting the familiar line therein, I began wondering to myself, as I lay upon my lounge, where the star of empire could go now, seeing that there was no longer any West left; and, reading on, half awake, after a late supper, and seeing in every column allusions to the glorious climate of California (in worn type), I asked myself, with a drowsy smile, whether it were not to reach this same glorious climate, perhaps, that the star in question had been bending her steps westward throughout recorded time.
If she is to go any further—I dozed—I—she—will have—to—wade—and I fell asleep!
18.
How long I slept I cannot say; but long enough to dream this:
Dream I.—[Welsh rarebit.]
America, at last (so it seemed to me in my vision), is full; and thousands upon thousands of our redundant population are pouring into Asia,—you among the rest; for your day had come,—and you are all as busy as bees, cutting the throats of the heathen, in order to bring them to a true knowledge of the living God, and secure their lands,—as our ancestors have served the treacherous and implacable Red Men.