structure that ever cumbered the earth.

It is not at all times that one can gain admittance into this
edifice, although most persons enter it at some period or other of
their lives; if not in their waking moments, then by the universal
passport of a dream. At my last visit I wandered thither unawares
while my mind was busy with an idle tale, and was startled by the
throng of people who seemed suddenly to rise up around me.

"Bless me! Where am I?" cried I, with but a dim recognition of the
place.

"You are in a spot," said a friend who chanced to be near at hand,
"which occupies in the world of fancy the same position which the
Bourse, the Rialto, and the Exchange do in the commercial world.
All who have affairs in that mystic region, which lies above, below,
or beyond the actual, may here meet and talk over the business of
their dreams."

"It is a noble hall," observed I.

"Yes," he replied. "Yet we see but a small portion of the edifice.
In its upper stories are said to be apartments where the inhabitants
of earth may hold converse with those of the moon; and beneath our
feet are gloomy cells, which communicate with the infernal regions,
and where monsters and chimeras are kept in confinement and fed with
all unwholesomeness."

In niches and on pedestals around about the hall stood the statues
or busts of men who in every age have been rulers and demigods in