Dream Life: A Fable of the SeasonsMitchell, Donald Grant
General
Dream Life: A Fable of the Seasons
Mitchell, Donald Grant
Essays; Life
As for Madge, the memory of her has been more wakeful, but less violent.
To say nothing of occasional returns to the old homestead, when you have
met her Nelly's letters not unfrequently drop a careless half-sentence
that keeps her strangely in mind.
"Madge," she says, "is sitting by me with her work;" or, "You ought to
see the little silk purse that Madge is knitting;" or,--speaking of some
country rout,--"Madge was there in the sweetest dress you can imagine."
All this will keep Madge in mind; not, it is true, in the ambitious
moods, or in the frolics with Dalton; but in those odd half-hours that
come stealing over one at twilight, laden with sweet memories of the
days of old.
A new romantic admiration is started by those pale lady-faces which
light up on a Sunday the gallery of the college chapel. An amiable and
modest fancy gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very
atmosphere of these courts, wakened with high metaphysic discourse,
seems to lend them a Greek beauty and fineness; and you attach to the
prettiest, that your eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote
maiden, and all the learning of her father--the professor. And as you
lie half-wakeful and half-dreaming, through the long Divisions of the
Doctor's morning discourse, the twinkling eyes in some corner of the
gallery bear you pleasant company as you float down those streaming
visions which radiate from you far over the track of the coming life.
But following very closely upon this comes a whole volume of street
romance. There are prettily shaped figures that go floating at
convenient hours for college observation along the thoroughfares of the
town. And these figures come to be known, and the dresses, and the
streets; and even the door-plate is studied. The hours are ascertained,
by careful observation and induction, at which some particular figure is
to be met,--or is to be seen at some low parlor-window, in white summer
dress, with head leaning on the hand, very melancholy, and very
dangerous. Perhaps her very card is stuck proudly into a corner of the
mirror in the college-chamber. After this may come moonlight meetings at
the gate, or long listenings to the plaintive lyrics that steal out of
the parlor-windows, and that blur wofully the text of the Conic
Sections.
Or perhaps she is under the fierce eye of some Cerberus of a
schoolmistress, about whose grounds you prowl piteously, searching for
small knot-holes in the surrounding board fence, through which little
_souvenirs_ of impassioned feeling may be thrust. Sonnets are written
for the town papers, full of telling phrases, and with classic allusions
and foot-notes which draw attention to some similar felicity of
expression in Horace or Ovid. Correspondence may even be ventured on,
enclosing locks of hair, and interchanging rings, and paper oaths of
eternal fidelity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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