And yet I did not go out, but stood hesitating at the window, while with every gust earth seemed to fling back its curls of rain from its shining forehead.  To stand on the brink of adventure is interesting in itself, and now that I could think over the details of my expedition was no longer bored.  So I stayed dreaming till the golden moment for action was passed, and a violent exclamation from one of the chess-players called me back to a prosaic world.  In a second the board was overturned and the players were locked in battle.  My little sister, who had already the feminine craving for tidiness, crept out of her corner and meekly gathered the chessmen from under the feet of the combatants.  I had seen it all before, and while I led my forces to the aid of the brother with whom at the moment I had some sort of alliance, I reflected that I would have done better to dare the adventure and set forth into the rainy world.

And this morning when I stood at my window, and my memory a little cruelly restored to this vision of a day long dead, I was still of the same opinion.  Oh!  I should have put on my boots and my waterproof and gone down to the little wood to meet the enchanter!  He would have given me the cap of invisibility, the purse of Fortunatus, and a pair of seven-league boots.  He would have taught me to conquer worlds, and to leave the easy triumphs of dreamers to madmen, philosophers, and poets, He would have made me a man of action, a statesman, a soldier, a founder of cities or a digger of graves.  For there are two kinds of men in the world when we have put aside the minor distinctions of shape and colour.  There are the men who do things and the men who dream about them.  No man can be both a dreamer and a man of action, and we are called upon to determine what role we shall play in life when we are too young to know what to do.

I do not believe that it was a mere wantonness of memory that preserved the image of that hour with such affectionate detail, where so many brighter and more eventful hours have disappeared for ever.  It seems to me likely enough that that moment of hesitation before the schoolroom window determined a habit of mind that has kept me dreaming ever since.  For all my life I have preferred thought to action; I have never run to the little wood; I have never met the enchanter.  And so this morning, when Fate played me this trick and my dream was chilled for an instant by the icy breath of the past, I did not rush out into the streets of life and lay about me with a flaming sword.  No; I picked up my pen and wrote some words on a piece of paper and lulled my shocked senses with the tranquillity of the idlest dream of all.