thy short day;
And now, that thou art passed away,
I know thou'rt blest.

_Pittsburgh, March, 1844._ SANCHO.

A DREAM.

This accident is not unlike my dream; belief of it
Oppresses me already.
OTHELLO.

Upon a certain clear and starry night of unbroken tranquility and peace,
in the month of September, in the year of Grace one thousand eight hundred
thirty and two; I, JOHN WATERS of man's Estate, Gentleman, dreamed a
Dream. And lest I might be forced, like the great Babylonian monarch of
yore, to say 'the thing is gone from me,' I resolved while a vague
remembrance yet rested in my thoughts, to record if possible some lasting
memorial of it.

Now, more than one half of the average number of years, assigned by
computation to a generation of our race, have, since that point of time,
rolled into the rearward hemisphere of Eternity; trials and changes, deep
and stern and manifold, have rent and desolated this _house not made with
hands_, and have exercised and broken the spirit that is supposed to be
contained within it; yet the slight memorandum, written at that time, lies
unchanged before me, and gives evidence of the comparatively impassible
duration of inert matter over man; whose home, and whose abiding-place is
not of earth!

It is not that I can hope to describe my sensations of that night, in such
a manner as to impart them to the contemplative spirit that may read this
sketch, and to afford pleasure at all comparable with that which I
enjoyed; but I have thought that I might by the recital awaken some
gratifying recollections of still higher flittings of the imagination into
the regions of unlimited Fancy; where the pleasure has been, as was mine,
alike unbounded and pure.

In an Existence like ours, where so much is ideal; where so many things
are feared, that never come to pass; hoped for, that are never realized;
enjoyed, that are impalpable to sense; where that, which by common
convention is called substantial and real, is very far inferior to that
which is falsely termed illusory and vain; where life borders on
immortality; and the spiritual world so closely overhangs the natural,
that it is as difficult to separate them as it is in Switzerland to know
which is Alps and which is Heaven;--there may oftentimes be much pleasure,
perhaps some instruction, in a DREAM.

What should we