He took it home and explained the matter to his wife.  “Once upon a time,” said he, “a fuel-gatherer dreamed he had killed a deer and forgotten where he had hidden it.  Now I have got the deer, and here it is; so his dream came true, in a way.”—­“Rubbish!” she answered.  “It was you must have dreamed the fuel-gatherer and his dreim.  You must have killed the deer yourself, since you have it there; but where is your fuel-gatherer?”

That night Li dreamed again; and in his dream saw Yen fetch the deer from its hiding-place and bring it home.  So in the morning he went to Yen’s house and there, sure enough, the deer was.  They argued the matter out, but to no purpose.  Then they took it before the magistrate, who gave judgment as follows: 

“The plaintiff began with a real deer and an alleged dream; and now comes forward with a real dream and an alleged deer.  The defendant has the deer the plaintiff dreamed, and wants to keep it.  According to his wife, however, the plaintiff and the deer are both but figments of the defendant’s dream.  Meanwhile, there is the deer; which you had better divide between you.”

The case was reported to the Prince of Cheng, whose opinion was that the magistrate had dreamed the whole story, himself.  But his Prime Minister said:  “If you want to distinguish between dream and waking, you would have to go back to the Yellow Emperor or Confucius.  As both are dead, you had better uphold the magistrate’s decision.” *

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* The tale is told both in Dr. Lionel Giles’s translation
mentioned above, and also, with verbal differences, in Dr. H. A.
Giles’s work on Chinese Literature.  The present telling
follows now one, now the other version, now goes its own way;—­
and pleads guilty to adding the verse the woodman crooned.
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XIII.  MANG THE PHILOSOPHER, AND BUTTERFLY CHWANG

Liehtse’s tale of the Dream and the Deer leads me naturally to this characteristic bit from Chwangtse:*—­

“Once upon a time, I, Chwangtse, dreamed I was a butterfly fluttering hither and thither; to all intents and purposes a veritable butterfly.  I followed my butterfly fancies, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man.  Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, a man again.  Now how am I to know whether I was then, Chwangtse dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am Chwang?”

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* Which, like nearly all the other passages from him in this
lecture, is quoted from Dr. H. A. Giles’s Chinese Literature,
in the Literatures of the World series; New York, Appleton.
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For which reason he is, says Dr. Giles, known to this day as “Butterfly Chwang”; and the name is not all inappropriate.  He flits from fun to philosophy, and from philosoply to fun, as if they were dark rose and laughing pansy; when he has you in the gravest depths of wisdom and metaphysic, he