



Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





DREAM DAYS

by Kenneth Grahame




Contents:

     THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER
     DIES IRAE
     MUTABILE SEMPER
     THE MAGIC RING
     ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER
     A SAGA OF THE SEAS
     THE RELUCTANT DRAGON
     A DEPARTURE




THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER


In the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters stood on
pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that one of us would
be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and without regard to his own
preferences, to wrestle with the inflections of some idiotic language
long rightly dead; while another, from some fancied artistic tendency
which always failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning
to hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with
tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to either sex,
and held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher
than to crack a whip in a circus-ring--in geography, for instance,
arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and queens--each would have
scorned to excel. And, indeed, whatever our individual gifts, a general
dogged determination to shirk and to evade kept us all at much the same
dead level,--a level of Ignorance tempered by insubordination.

Fortunately there existed a wide range of subjects, of healthier tone
than those already enumerated, in which we were free to choose for
ourselves, and which we would have scorned to consider education; and in
these we freely followed each his own particular line, often attaining
an amount of special knowledge which struck our ignorant elders as
simply uncanny. For Edward, the uniforms, accoutrements, colours,
and mottoes of the regiments composing the British Army had a special
glamour. In the matter of facings he was simply faultless; among
chevrons, badges, medals, and stars, he moved familiarly; he even knew
the names of most of the colonels in command; and he would squander
sunny hours prone on the lawn, heedless of challenge from bird or beast,
poring over a tattered Army List. My own accomplishment was of another
character--took, as it seemed to me, a wider and a more untrammelled
range. Dragoons might have swaggered in Lincoln green, riflemen might
have donned sporrans over tartan trews, without exciting notice or
comment from me. But did you seek precise information as to the fauna of
the American continent, then you had come to the right shop. Where and
why the bison "wallowed"; how beaver were to be trapped and wild turkeys
stalked; the grizzly and how to handle him, and the pretty pressing
ways of the constrictor,--in fine, the haunts and the habits of all that
burrowed, strutted, roared, or wriggled between the Atlantic and the
Pacific,--all this knowledge I took for my province. By the others my
equipment was fully recognized. Supposing a book with a bear-hunt in
it made its way into the house, and the atmosphere was electric with
excitement; still, it was necessary that I should first decide whether
the slot had been properly described and properly followed up, ere the
work could be stamped with full approval. A writer might have won
fame throughout the civilized globe for his trappers and his realistic
backwoods, and all went for nothing. If his pemmican were not properly
compounded I damned his achievement, and it was heard no more of.

Harold was hardly old enough to possess a special subject of his own. He
had his instincts, indeed, and at bird's-nesting they almost amounted to
prophecy. Where we others only suspected eggs, surmised possible eggs,
hinted doubtfully at eggs in the neighbourhood, Harold went straight for
the right bush, bough, or hole as if he carried a divining-rod. But this
faculty belonged to the class of mere gifts, and was not to be ranked
with Edward's lore regarding facings, and mine as to the habits of
prairie-dogs, both gained by painful study and extensive travel in those
"realms of gold," the Army List and Ballantyne.

Selina's subject