it--nor waste it upon those who do not....

Thus serenaded, I would close my eyes, and lapped in darkness and
warmth and heavenly sound, be lulled asleep--perchance to dream!

For my early childhood was often haunted by a dream, which at first I
took for a reality--a transcendant dream of some interest and importance
to mankind, as the patient reader will admit in time. But many years of
my life passed away before I was able to explain and account for it.

I had but to turn my face to the wall, and soon I found myself in
company with a lady who had white hair and a young face--a very
beautiful young face.

Sometimes I walked with her, hand in hand--I being quite a small
child--and together we fed innumerable pigeons who lived in a tower by a
winding stream that ended in a water-mill. It was too lovely, and I
would wake.

Sometimes we went into a dark place, where there was a fiery furnace
with many holes, and many people working and moving about--among them a
man with white hair and a young face, like the lady, and beautiful red
heels to his shoes. And under his guidance I would contrive to make in
the furnace a charming little cocked hat of colored glass--a treasure!
And the sheer joy thereof would wake me.

Sometimes the white-haired lady and I would sit together at a square
box from which she made lovely music, and she would sing my favorite
song--a song that I adored. But I always woke before this song came to
an end, on account of the too insupportably intense bliss I felt on