ants. I had seen it all before, and while I led my forces
to the aid of the brother with whom at the moment I had some sort of
alliance, I reflected that I would have done better to dare the
adventure and set forth into the rainy world.

And this morning when I stood at my window, and my memory a little
cruelly restored to this vision of a day long dead, I was still of
the same opinion. Oh! I should have put on my boots and my waterproof
and gone down to the little wood to meet the enchanter! He would have
given me the cap of invisibility, the purse of Fortunatus, and a pair
of seven-league boots. He would have taught me to conquer worlds, and
to leave the easy triumphs of dreamers to madmen, philosophers, and
poets, He would have made me a man of action, a statesman, a soldier,
a founder of cities or a digger of graves. For there are two kinds of
men in the world when we have put aside the minor distinctions of
shape and colour. There are the men who do things and the men who
dream about them. No man can be both a dreamer and a man of action,
and we are called upon to determine what role we shall play in life
when we are too young to know what to do.

I do not believe that it was a mere wantonness of memory that
preserved the image of that hour with such affectionate detail, where
so many brighter and more eventful hours have disappeared for ever.
It seems to me likely enough that that moment of hesitation before
the schoolroom window determined a habit of mind that has kept me
dreaming ever since. For all my life I have preferred thought to
action; I have never run to the little wood; I have never met the
enchanter. And so this morning, when Fate played me this trick and my
dream was chilled for an instant by the icy breath of the past, I did
not rush out into the streets of life and lay about me with a flaming
sword. No; I picked up my pen and wrote some words on a piece of
paper and lulled my shocked senses with the tranquillity of the
idlest dream of all.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Ship, by Richard Middleton

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