Young Chipfield, who has sixty pounds per
annum and no vacation, repudiates the idea.
Nothing would induce him to go—everybody
goes there—he considers the Rhine a mere
resort for Cockneys—no, not for Cockneys—
observing Higginbotham's sudden frown—
he doesn't mean that all——

"He means, for idlers—dreamers!" cries
Higginbotham.

"Of course, dreamers!" chimes the chorus.

"Now, gentlemen," resumes the angler,
rapidly winding in line, "did you ever think
of the Rhine when you tasted that Assmannshausen?"

"No, I thought of the cellar," smirks Mr.
Chipfield.

Mr. Thorneyside also laughs a sardonic
negative.

"Yet you found the wine good—knew that
it had body, flavour, bouquet?"

Chorus shouts in the affirmative, while I
feel each query a separate tug.

"Would you think that wine bad if it had
been grown in Lincolnshire?"

"It might have been grown in my cabbage
garden," exclaims Thorneyside. "If the
article itself be prime, who cares where it
comes from?"

"Ho! ho!" rejoins our host, giving me a
desperate jerk, "you're there, are you? You
know things by what they are, do you? With
you bacon's salt, and peas are green! A
thing's a thing and no more, wherever it
comes from, is it? Egad, gentlemen, I'm
with you; I, too, am one of those plain, dull
dogs who see with their eyes, and taste with
their palates. But, then, I'm a slow-coach,
a vulgar wide-awake—I can't dream—I never
was a dreamer, I never could be a dreamer,
and, what's more astounding, gentlemen, I
wouldn't be one if I could!"

A blow on the table gives emphasis to the
last words. The lawyer and the divine go
into fits. I am landed, and Mr. Higginbotham
is repaid for his dinner.

We were next regaled with an account of
all the dreamers whom our host had ever
known, and whose special end in existence
seemed to be his glorification by contrast.
There was Tubbs, he said, who had such a
first-rate power of dreaming, that he could
make what he liked of the future, and nothing
at all of the present. His youthful bent was
towards the church, till Oxford disenchanted
him. His next passion was for a forensic
career. He imagined himself diving into the
merits of causes by intuition, and thrilling
juries with harangues that should have the
convenience of costing no trouble in their
preparation, while they should be irresistible
in their effect. So enthralling was this dream,
that it needed three weeks' attendance at a
pleader's chambers, preceded by a fee of two
hundred guineas, to disperse it. Tubbs was
subsequently haunted by a vision of military
glory, and a commission was obtained for
him; but a brief experience of parade
sufficed to lay that phantom. There was
Redivivus Smirke, too, who had a dream of
remodelling society, and whose Harmonic
Universe, illustrated by diagrams, might
have been inspected for three months, in
eighteen hundred and forty-nine, at his lodgings
in Fudget Court—hours of attendance,
from eleven to four. Whatever his logical
powers, no one who heard Smirke could
doubt that he had a large gift of invention;
and if he had chosen to manufacture novels—
says Higginbotham—he might have lived on
the tastes of sillier dreamers than himself.
But the regenerator, with whom life itself
was one grand scheme of fiction, was far too
superb to deal in the small imaginative ware
of booksellers. So he expounded the diagrams
to various eccentrics, while his wife took in
plain work till she sickened, and, deserted by
Smirke, became, with her children, dependent
on the parish. As I have already said, I
sometimes agreed with Higginbotham, and
felt no very acute grief to learn that Tubbs
and Smirke, after having so dreamed away
the purposes of life, should at last be somewhat
roughly awakened to its realities.

I could, however, no longer sympathise
with our host when, according to his wont,
he wound up with the instance of my friend
Merton, whom he denounced as a flagrant
example of the visionary class. He impeaches
Merton on several distinct counts. " First,"
says he, "Merton was nephew to one of our
partners, and, with common prudence, might
have become one himself." Yes, honours and
emoluments little short of Higginbotham's
own were within his reach. Merton, too,
might have owned vintages abroad and
mansions in park-like domains at home. Merton,
too, might have been a chairman of boards, a
creator of railway and insurance companies,
a Presence in Threadneedle Street." He
was actually offered a stool in our counting-
house, and—declined!" The accuser pauses
that we may have time to weigh the enormity,
then, in a vein of fine irony, resumes—"Yes,
declined! his tastes were not commercial;
he had a private independence—that there
may be no mistake, it was just a hundred
a-year, gentlemen. What did he want with
more? He could live in the country, he had
books, friends, and he could converse with
Nature! His own words, I assure you. Did
you ever converse with Nature, Thorneyside,
or you Chipfield, except on Sundays, when
it's the habit of your cloth to say so? I never
had any talk with Nature! I never dreamed!
As for books, they're well enough, though a
man who has his hands full don't want 'em,
and they ruin the digestion. Then for friendship,"
observes Higginbotham, with more
frankness than courtesy, "we know it's humbug
—we serve each other's turns—Thorneyside
draws my leases, Chipfield has an eye to
Easter offerings, and my dinner sometimes
goes down better with a little talk to season
it. Between ourselves—between friends—