enchantment over that winter morning, the first one of a new year.

Once there was, among my presents, a large illustrated book treating of
the antediluvian world.

Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the
mysteries of prehistoric creations. I knew something about those
terrible creatures that in geologic times shook the primitive forests
with their heavy tread; for a long time the thought of them disquieted
me. I found them all in my book pictured in their proper habitat,
surrounded by great brakes, and standing under a leaden sky.

The antediluvian world already haunted my imagination and became the
constant subject of my dreams; often I concentrated my whole mind upon
it, and endeavored to picture to myself one of its gigantic landscapes
that seemed ever enveloped in a sinister and gloomy twilight with a
background filled in with great moving shadows. Then when the vision
thus created took on a seeming reality I felt an inexpressible sadness
that was like an exhalation of the soul,--as soon as the emotion passed
the dream-structure vanished.

Soon after this I sketched a new scene for the "Donkey's Skin;" it
was one representing the liassic period. I painted a dismal swamp
overshadowed by lowering clouds, where, in the shave-grass and the
gigantic ferns, strange extinct beasts wandered slowly.

The play of the "Donkey's Skin" seemed no longer the same Donkey's Skin.
I discarded one by one the little stage people who now offended me by
their uncompromising doll-like stiffness; they were relegated to their
card-board box, the poor little things, where they slept the sleep