for a single instant wide awake in that
realm of illusions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its
ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their
strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed.
The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind. You
question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your
waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of
your dream. While yet in suspense another clock flings its heavy clang
over the slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a
long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must
proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner; You count the
strokes--one, two; and there they cease with a booming sound like the
gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it
would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest
enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue, while before
you, till the sun comes from "Far Cathay" to brighten your window,
there is almost the space of a summer night--one hour to be spent in
thought with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and
two in that strangest of enjoyments the forgetfulness alike of joy and
woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and
appears so distant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty
air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has already
vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged
from the future. You have found an intermediate space where the
business of life does not intrude, where the passing moment lingers
and becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, when he
thinks nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to take
breath. Oh that he would fall asleep and let mortals live on without
growing older!

Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion
would dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocably
awake, you peep through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observe
that the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frost-work, and
that each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will be
time enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to
breakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass where the
silvery mountain-peaks of the frost-scener