An Autumn Reverie 131 



themselves to their tasks, and given an adequate taste 

 of their quality, the interest for ever has gone from 

 them. It is the untried racer, the youth whose work 

 is not yet begun, and whose power is ungauged, that 

 gives a fillip to surmise and provokes to speculation. 

 To dream the dreams of an ambitious boy, to see in 

 imagination the beardless writer of an epic (in manu- 

 script) laurelled and famous, to single out some village 

 ragamuffin as a Whittington, or in another mood when 

 the mind desires more active employment to prefigure 

 the downfall of their cloud castles, and watch with the 

 mind's eye the bubble reputation glittering far above 

 them, is more delightful than any show of celebrities. 

 When your own time for building visions has passed, 

 and you have learned that to jog inconspicuously 

 through the world is best, there is no pleasanter way 

 of spending a sunny afternoon than to sit on the bole 

 of a fallen tree under a dome of green, and cast golden 

 horoscopes for your friends, weaving romances that 

 will never see Mudie's, and watching a drama played 

 in a theatre of your own building, that like some 

 itinerant plays has an adjustable ending, tragical or 

 comic as your liver may dictate. One generation 

 treads close on the heels of another, and the characters 

 come trooping to you without the trouble of invention, 

 and while the years are checking one set of forecasts 

 you are fashioning others. 



If anyone asks what is the ultimate gain, reply 

 that there is no such word as 'gain' in your voca- 



