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— 
