Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/91

 ! To few is this dream granted; and these few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs!

This skyward track, however, is fit only for the winged portion of the human species, for the smallest. What can it profit poor quill-driving brethren, whose souls have not even wing-shells, to say nothing of wings? Or these tethered persons with the best back, breast, and neck-fins, who float motionless in the wicker Fish-box of the State, and are not allowed to swim, because the Box or State, long ago tied to the shore, itself swims in the name of the Fishes? To the whole standing and writing host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors, Clerks of all departments, and all the lobsters packed together heels over head into the Lobster-basket of the Government office-rooms, and for refreshments, sprinkled over with a few nettles; to these persons, what way of becoming happy here can I possibly point out?

My second merely; and that is as follows: to take a compound microscope, and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that their drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that butterfly-dust is peacock-feathers, mouldiness a flowery-field, and sand a heap of jewels. These microscopic recreations are more lasting than all costly watering-place recreations.—But I must explain these metaphors by new ones. The purpose for which I have sent Fixlein's Life into the Messrs. Lübeks' Warehouse, is simply that in this same Life—therefore in this Preface it is less needful—I may show to the whole Earth that we ought to value little joys more than great ones, the night-gown more than the dress-coat; that Plutus's heaps are worth less than his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy day; and that not great, but little good-