Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [Illustration: ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER] DREAM DAYS _COMPANION VOLUME TO THIS BOOK_ THE GOLDEN AGE BY KENNETH GRAHAME _PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH_ DREAM DAYS [Illustration] DREAM DAYS BY KENNETH GRAHAME ILLUSTRATED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON AND NEW YORK CONTENTS PAGE THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER 3 DIES IRÆ 25 MUTABILE SEMPER 47 THE MAGIC RING 71 ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER 97 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 123 THE RELUCTANT DRAGON 149 A DEPARTURE 207 THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER IN the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters stood on pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that one of us would be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and without regard to his own preferences, to wrestle with the inflections of some idiotic language long rightly dead; while another, from some fancied artistic tendency which always failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning to hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to either sex, and held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher than to crack a whip in a circus-ring--in geography, for instance, arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and queens--each would have scorned to excel. And, indeed, whatever our individual gifts, a general dogged determination to shirk and to evade kept us all at much the same dead level,--a level of ignorance tempered by insubordination.