222 A GARDEN DIARY 



further hint, or indication, seems as natural as 

 for shipwrecked sailors to be for ever on the 

 watch for sails. 



I remember it is years since, yet the im- 

 pression is as clear as though it were yesterday 

 one who, during the vigils of a sleepless night, 

 slipped suddenly into a dream. And in that 

 dream it seemed to the dreamer as though he 

 stood upon a narrow- topped hill, encompassed 

 by all the stars, and lifted high in air above the 

 slumbering earth. And, looking upwards, he 

 was aware of a sky, immeasurably vaster and 

 higher, or so he thought, than he had ever 

 observed any sky to be before. And, still gazing 

 into that vast sky, the dreamer perceived that it 

 was filled with what at first he took to be snow- 

 flakes. Looking more closely he saw that, if 

 snowflakes, then they were snowflakes lit up 

 by all the colours of the prism. And one of 

 these snowflakes, just then slowly descending, 

 touched the dreamer's head with a soft, but 

 quite a sensible impact. And as it touched him, 

 lo, a new thought sprang up, alive, full-fledged, 

 wonderful, within his brain ; a thought absolutely 

 unsuspected by him before ; vast, formative, 

 irresistible, like some new law of Evolution, or 

 of Gravitation. And, with it, light seemed to 

 break in upon him from every side at once, and 

 a great joy, and a sense of elasticity such as he 

 had never known before. And a voice said 



