e they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor,
you find yourself, 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 bed-time, 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 way-side to take breath, O 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 thro