morning that I was fundamentally certain that my midnight
adventure had not happened outside this world.

But I was more arrogant than the ancient Emperors Pharaoh or
Nebuchadnezzar; for I attempted to interpret my own dream. The fire was
feeding upon solid stacks of unused beech or pine, gray and white piles
of virgin wood. It was an orgy of mere waste; thousands of good
things were being killed before they had ever existed. Doors, tables,
walking-sticks, wheelbarrows, wooden swords for boys, Dutch dolls for
girls I could hear the cry of each uncreated thing as it expired in the
flames. And then I thought of that other noble tower of needless things
that stood in the field beyond my garden; the bonfire, the mountain of
vanities, that is meant for burning; and how it stood dark and lonely in
the meadow, and the birds hopped on its corners and the dew touched and
spangled its twigs. And I remembered that there are two kinds of fires,
the Bad Fire and the Good Fire the last must surely be the meaning of
Bonfire. And the paradox is that the Good Fire is made of bad things, of
things that we do not want; but the Bad Fire is made of good things,
of things that we do want; like all that wealth of wood that might have
made dolls and chairs and tables, but was only making a hueless ash.

And then I saw, in my vision, that just as there are two fires, so there
are two revolutions. And I saw that the whole mad modern world is a race
between them. Which will happen first—the revolution in which
bad things shall perish, or that other revolution, in which good things
shall perish also? One is the riot that all good men, even the most
conservative, really dream of, when the sneer shall be struck from the
face of the well-fed; when the wine of honour shall be poured down the
throat of despair; when we shall, so far as to the sons of flesh is
possible, take tyranny and usury and public treason and bind them into
bundles and burn them. And the other is the disruption that may come
prematurely, negatively, and suddenly in the night; like the fire in my
little town.

It may come because the mere strain of modern life is unbearable; and in
it even the things that men do desire may break down; marriage and
fair ownership and worship and the mysterious worth of man. The two
revolutions, white and black, are racing each other like two railway
trains; I cannot guess the issue...but even as I thought of it, the
tallest turret of the ti