but at last she stiffened, like another Niobe, into marble. A strange
fate, but I must request your belief; dreams are great magicians, are
they not?

Then the other looked upon me and spoke:--'For this justice done me,'
said she, 'you shall now be recompensed; come, mount this car'--and
lo, one stood ready, drawn by winged steeds like Pegasus--, 'that you
may learn what fair sights another choice would have cost you.' We
mounted, she took the reins and drove, and I was carried aloft and
beheld towns and nations and peoples from the East to the West; and
methought I was sowing like Triptolemus; but the nature of the seed I
cannot call to mind--only this, that men on earth when they saw it
gave praise, and all whom I reached in my flight sent me on my way
with blessings.

When she had presented these things to my eyes, and me to my admirers,
she brought me back, no more clad as when my flight began; I returned,
methought, in glorious raiment. And finding my father where he stood
waiting, she showed him my raiment, and the guise in which I came, and
said a word to him upon the lot which they had come so near appointing
for me. All this I saw when scarce out of my childhood; the confusion
and terror of the stick, it may be, stamped it on my memory.

'Good gracious,' says some one, before I have done, 'what a longwinded
lawyer's vision!' 'This,' interrupts another, 'must be a winter dream,
to judge by the length of night required; or perhaps it took three
nights, like the making of Heracles. What has come over him, that he
babbles such puerilities? memorable things indeed, a child in bed, and
a very ancient, worn-out dream! what stale frigid stuff! does he take
us for interpreters of dreams?' Sir, I do not. When Xenophon related