long, saccharine sentences, dripping with
sugar as they crawl. Tell something! Let it be real,--or let it not be
at all.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

O the irony stamped on those four little letters! Real! And my whole
heart in it, a man's whole heart. That means something. But I obey you.
Last night I dreamed all night long, one picture after another. First
came this: I stood upon a dusty way, and multitudes of people were
passing. They looked like you and like my father, but they were sad.
They were bowed down, and many of them carried great brown bundles on
their backs, bundles of wood, it seemed to me, or withered grass. Then
I, too, grew very sad and heavy because every one else seemed so; but
suddenly my eye fell on a great light, and I wondered that I had not
seen it before, and that none of them saw it. There, in the midst, by
the roadside, stood the Apollo, warm, rosy, afire with life. His mantle
was purple touched with rose: such color as we see in the east before
the sun comes, and in the west after he is gone. His hair was long, and
ran down his back in a great tawny river,--darker than yours,--and he
stretched out his arm fearlessly holding the bow. Yet no one saw him
but me. I fancied, even in my dream, that the arrow he would shoot
might teach them a happier way to travel; but no one even knew he was
there, or heard the twanging of the string or saw the cleaving of the
arrow's flight. Then I sank down into darkness like a gulf, and only
rose again to the splendor of another dream. The world seemed very
large, larger than it does when you stand on the peak of Lone Mountain,
with not a shade to cover you. There were many people, in an agony of
terror and pain, as Pierre was the night after I found him wounded and
delirious from his fight with the bears. The people were old, and poor,
and shabby, but still they looked like you, and their agony was
dreadful to behold. They were all gazing upward, and I, too, turned my
eyes to see, and lo! the heavens were all burning and brazen, and I saw
that the heat was greater than I could endure. The sorrow and fear of
those about me grew more terrible; they wept and wrung their
hands,--still like Pierre, when he imagined he was again pursued. One
thought came over me; and it seemed to me more awful than anything I
saw. The trees! the sweet, faithful trees in all their newest green.
They would be burned too. There would be no more sunrise or sunset.
Th