le
people who manage man's internal theatre had not as yet received a very
rigorous training; and played upon their stage like children who should
have slipped into the house and found it empty, rather than like drilled
actors performing a set piece to a huge hall of faces. But presently my
dreamer began to turn his former amusement of story-telling to (what is
called) account; by which I mean that he began to write and sell his
tales. Here was he, and here were the little people who did that part of
his business, in quite new conditions. The stories must now be trimmed
and pared and set upon all-fours, they must run from a beginning to an
end and fit (after a manner) with the laws of life; the pleasure, in one
word, had become a business; and that not only for the dreamer, but for
the little people of his theatre. These understood the change as well as
he. When he lay down to prepare himself for sleep, he no longer sought
amusement, but printable and profitable tales; and after he had dozed
off in his box-seat, his little people continued their evolutions with
the same mercantile designs. All other forms of dream deserted him but
two: he still occasionally reads the most delightful books, he still
visits at times the most delightful places; and it is perhaps worthy of
note that to these same places, and to one in particular, he returns at
intervals of months and years, finding new field-paths, visiting new
neighbours, beholding that happy valley under new effects of noon and
dawn and sunset. But all the rest of the family of visions is quite lost
to him: the common, mangled version of yesterday's affairs, the
raw-head-and-bloody-bones nightmare, rumoured to be the child of toasted
cheese--these and their like are gone; and, for the most part, whether
awake or asleep, he is simply occupied--he or his little people--in
consciously making stories for the market. This dreamer (like many
other persons) has encountered some trifling vicissitudes of fortune.
When the bank begins to send letters and the butcher to linger at the
back gate, he sets to belabouring his brains after a story, for that is
his readiest money-winner; and, behold! at once the little people begin
to bestir themselves in the same quest, and labour all night long, and
all night long set before him truncheons of tales upon their lighted
theatre. No fear of his being frightened now; the flying heart and the
frozen scalp are things bygone; applause, growing app