of romance, of knighthood, and of chivalry. Again it was winter time
and the world was buried deep under white drifts, with all its
brightness and beauty of meadow and forest hidden by the cold mantle,
and all its music of running brooks and singing birds hushed by an icy
hand, when, snug and warm under blankets and comforters, after an
evening of stories, he slipped away into the wonderland of dreams--not
the irresponsible, sleeping, dreams--those do not count--but the
dreams that come between waking and sleeping, wherein a boy dare do
all the great deeds he ever read about and can be all the things that
ever were put in books for boys to wish they were.

Oh, but those were brave dreams--those dreams of his Yesterdays! No
cruel necessity of life hedged them in. No wall of the practical or
possible set a limit upon them. No right or wrong decreed the way they
should go. In his Yesterdays, there were fairy Godmothers to endow him
with unlimited power and to grant all his wishes, even unto mountains
of golden wealth and vast caverns filled with all manner of precious
gems. In his Yesterdays, there were wicked giants and horrid dragons
and evil beasts to kill, with always a good Genii to see that they did
not harm him the while he bravely took their baleful lives. In his
Yesterdays, he was a prince in gorgeous raiment; an emperor with
jeweled scepter and golden crown; a knight in armor, with a sword and
proudly stepping horse of war; he was a soldier leading a forlorn
hope; or a general, with his plumed staff officers about him,
directing the battle from a mountain top; he was a sailor cast away on
a desert island; or a captain commanding his ship in a storm or,
clinging to the shrouds in a smother of battle flame and smoke,
shouting his orders through a trumpet to his gallant crew; he was a
pirate; a robber chief; a red Indian; a hunter; a scout of the
plains--he could be anything, in those dreams of his Yesterdays,