Dream Life: A Fable of the Seasons

Twelve years ago, this autumn, when I had finished the concluding chapters of this little book, I wrote a letter of Dedication to Washington Irving, and, forwarding it by mail t...

You would perhaps like to find your speculations about wealth, marriage, or influence called by some better name than Dreams. You would like to see the history of them--if writt...

You would have better luck than even Crusoe; you would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores of hatchets, and the captain's dog, and great puncheons of sweetmeats, (which Crus...

It makes no difference that they wish to be rid of your noise, now that Charlie is sick of a fever: the reason is not at all in the way of your pride of visiting. You are to hav...

Frank has a grandfather living in the country, a good specimen of the old-fashioned New-England farmer. And--go where one will the world over--I know of no race of men who, take...

Let not any one suppose, then, that in this detail of the country life through which our hero is led, I would cast obloquy or a sneer upon its simplicity, or upon its lack of re...

How you listen for each as it is uttered,--running down the page in advance,--rejoicing when some hard passage comes to a stout man in the corner; and what a sigh of relief--on...

After a time--it seems a long time, but it is in truth a very short time--you find who she is who is thus entrancing you. It is done most carelessly. No creature could imagine t...

Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems to cover the whole area of life: you set up your affections and your duties; you build hopes with fairy scenery, and away they all...

----She is there to bid you God speed! and an adieu that hangs like music on your ear as you go out to the every-day labor of life. At evening she is there to greet you, as you...

Are there not times in every man's life when there flashes on him a feeling--nay, more, an absolute conviction--that this soul is but a spark belonging to some upper fire; and t...

Sickness comes over you, and binds you for weary days and nights,--in which life hovers doubtfully, and the lips babble secrets that you cherish. It is astonishing how disease c...

What you know to be love, and what you fancy to be duty, struggle long; but love conquers. And with sweet trust in her, and double trust in God, you await your return. That retu...

And as you loiter in dreams over the wide waste of what is gone,--a mingled array of griefs and of joys, of failures and of triumphs,--you bless God that there has been so much...