II.

_With my Reader._


Having silenced my Aunt Tabithy, I shall be generous enough, in my
triumph, to offer an explanatory chat to my reader.

This is a history of Dreams; and there will be those who will sneer at
such a history, as the work of a dreamer. So indeed it is; and you, my
courteous reader, are a dreamer too!

You would perhaps like to find your speculations about wealth, marriage,
or influence called by some better name than Dreams. You would like to
see the history of them--if written at all--baptized at the font of your
own vanity, with some such title as--life's cares, or life's work. If
there had been a philosophic naming to my observations, you might have
reckoned them good; as it is, you count them all bald and palpable
fiction.

But is it so? I care not how matter-of-fact you may be, you have in your
own life at some time proved the very truth of what I have set down; and
the chances are, that even now, gray as you may be, and economic as you
may be, and devotional as you pretend to be, you light up your Sabbath
reflections with just such dreams of wealth, of per centages, or of
family, as you will find scattered over these pages.

I am not to be put aside with any talk about stocks, and duties, and
respectability: all these, though very eminent matters, are but so many
types in the volume of your thought; and your eager resolves about them