rodded
me with their sharp elbows.

But I spoze I must have droze off, for all to once I wuz passin'
through a great silent city. Hours and hours I trod up and down broad
stun highways, through endless parks and Pleasure Places, climbin'
interminable flights of marble stairs, walkin' through immense picture
galleries. Days and days went by, whilst I wuz conductin' this quest
through a deserted city, searchin' for sunthin' I couldn't name. Till
at last I lay wore out, on a couch, and Josiah wuz bendin' over me. He
had a small green hat sot rakishly on one side, a red neck-tie flashed
out, a immense cigar wuz in his mouth, out of which streamed a flame
of fire. As he bent over me, and I see his dissolute linement and
mean, I groaned out, "Oh Josiah, is it thus we meet?"

"We meet as Highlariers!" sez he gayly, and bent still closter, I
spozed he wuz goin' to kiss me. And so philosophical is my mind asleep
or awake, I thought even then, the law couldn't touch him for it if he
did. But before his face met mine, that immense flaming cigar sot fire
to the piller case. The flames riz up round me, the smoke entered my
nostrils and nose.

I sprung up. Josiah had disappeared, but the smell of fire remained. I
hurried to the winder. As I had last seen it all the great pleasure
ground seemed fast asleep. Gone wuz the tread of the innumerable
multitude. The music of the bands wuz hushed, the cries of the
different venders and showmen, automobiles, wagons, the stiddy sound
of machinery running the mechanical amusements, and the constant sound
of footsteps and voices, that filled the day full, wuz all hushed.
Even to the long onshapely animal house Night had brought silence. The
hull place looked like a City of Dreams, only the eternal waves
washin' up on the beach, seemed to emphasize the silence.

But what wuz that I see over the dim ruffs? A slender spiral of flame
shootin' up through the shadows, and on Dreamland tower a rosy blush
seemed to grow on its whiteness. As I watched the flame, it grew
larger and larger, and my heart most stopped beatin', for I knowed
what a fire would mean in them unsubstantial buildin's. And somewhere
there under them flimsy ruffs was my Josiah!

The flame increased! Coney Island wuz afire! Made sensitive by
anxiety, I had reconized the smoke borne to me on some vagrant
breeze.

The long elaborate dream of mine hadn't lasted a second. It wuz staged
in the _real_ Dream Land, for the awful drayma