It is almost necessary for some people to build
air-castles. They get more real pleasure in them than they would from
real castles on the Rhine, the Danube, or along the rivers of sunny
France. Have you never read Curtis's "Prue and I"?
Ah, how beautiful it is to be dreaming about a future, though it may
never come true!--to be floating on the sunset tide of Venice; to be
journeying over the passes of the Alps in summer, and always approaching
Mount Blanc; to be resting by the fountain in Alhambra's Court of Lions;
to be gazing at the Sistine Madonna in Dresden, or at the Ascension
in the Vatican; to be dosing in an orange grove in southern California;
to be awed by the deep canons of the Colorado, or to be filled with
the sublimity of the Yosemite!
How glorious to be dreaming of what we will do when we are women with
wills and purses all our own!--with long rows of books in our libraries,
elegant pictures in our drawing-rooms, and oh! such beautiful boudoirs,
all, all of our own; or, at least, a room which shall be a _sanctum
sanctorum_, where the fire on the hearth never smoulders, and where
loving friends, beautiful mementos, and peaceful thoughts make us always
happy. How fine to fancy longings achieved, and present desires
gratified!
All dreams, yes; but they do sometimes come out better than true. The
only thing wiser than dreaming is doing,--working in such a way as
to bring the distant near, and getting out of the veriest commonplaces
the joy we fancied lay only in the future, in other lands, or only
in dreams.
Pages:
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110