FOUR DREAMERS 



I REMEMBER the first man I ever saw sit- 

 ting still by himself out of doors. What his 

 name was I do not know. I never knew. 

 He was a stranger, who came to visit in our 

 village when I was perhaps ten years old. I 

 had crossed a field, and gone over a low hill 

 (not so low then as now), and there, in the 

 shade of an apple tree, I beheld this stranger, 

 not fishing, nor digging, nor eating an ap- 

 ple, nor picking berries, nor setting snares, 

 but sitting still. It was almost like seeing a 

 ghost. I doubt if I was ever the same boy 

 afterward. Here was a new kind of man. 

 I wondered if he was a poet ! Even then I 

 think I had heard that poets sometimes acted 

 strangely, and saw things invisible to others' 

 ken. 



I should not have been surprised, I sup- 

 pose, to have found a man looking at a pic- 

 ture, some " nice," high-colored " chromo," 



