u Ling," prompts the White Logic, "who declared that to a
drunken man the affairs of this world appear but as so much duckweed on a
river. Very well. Have another Scotch, and let semblance and deception
become duck-weed on a river."

And while I pour and sip my Scotch, I remember another Chinese
philosopher, Chuang Tzu, who, four centuries before Christ, challenged
this dreamland of the world, saying: "How then do I know but that the
dead repent of having previously clung to life? Those who dream of the
banquet, wake to lamentation and sorrow. Those who dream of lamentation
and sorrow, wake to join the hunt. While they dream, they do not know
that they dream. Some will even interpret the very dream they are
dreaming; and only when they awake do they know it was a dream.... Fools
think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know if they are
really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who
say you are dreams--I am but a dream myself.

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering
hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was
conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was
unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and there
I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming
I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."

CHAPTER XXXVII

"Come," says the White Logic, "and forget these Asian dreamers of old
time. Fill your glass and let us look at the parchments of the dreamers
of yesterday who dreamed their dreams on your own warm hills."

I pore over the abstract of title of the vineyard called Tokay on the
rancho called Petaluma. It is a sad long list of the names of men,
beginning with Manuel Micheltoreno, one time Mexican "Governor,
Commander-in-Chief, and Inspector of the Department of the Californias,"
who deeded ten square leagues of stolen Indian land to Colonel Don
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo for services rendered his country and for
moneys paid by him for ten years to his soldiers.

Immediately this musty record of man's land lust assumes the
formidableness of a battle--the quick struggling with the dust. There
are deeds of trust, mortgages, certificates of release, transfers,
judgments, foreclosures, writs of attachment, orders of sale, tax liens,
petitions for letters of administration, and decrees of distribution. It
is like