And  what  pen  can  portray  the  wonderful  enchantments  of  a  boy's
dreamland  !  No  marvelous  visions  wrought  by  the  weird,  strange  power
of  hasheesh,  no  dreams  that  come  to  the  sleep  of  jaded  woman  or  tired
man,  no  ghastly  specters  that  dance  attendance  upon  cold  mince  pie,
but  shrink  into  tiresome,  stale,  and  trifling  commonplaces  compared
with  the  marvelous,  the  grotesque,  the  wonderful,  the  terrible,  the
i)eautiful  and  the  enchanting  scenes  and  people  of  a  boy's  dreamland.
This  may  be  owing,  in  a  great  measure,  to  the  fact  that  the  boy  never
relates  his  dream  until  all  the  other  members  of  the  family  have  related
theirs;  and  then  he  comes  in,  like  a  back  county,  with  the  necessary
majority;  like  the  directory  of  a  western  city,  following  the  census  of  a
rival  town.
