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[Illustration: ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER]




DREAM DAYS




_COMPANION VOLUME TO THIS BOOK_

THE GOLDEN AGE

BY

KENNETH GRAHAME

_PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH_




DREAM DAYS




[Illustration]

DREAM DAYS

BY KENNETH GRAHAME

ILLUSTRATED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH

          JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
          LONDON AND NEW YORK




CONTENTS


                                           PAGE
          THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER         3
          DIES IRAE                           25
          MUTABILE SEMPER                    47
          THE MAGIC RING                     71
          ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER        97
          A SAGA OF THE SEAS                123
          THE RELUCTANT DRAGON              149
          A DEPARTURE                       207




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
