The Dream Coach

If you have been unhappy all the day, Wait patiently until the night: When in the sky the gentle stars are bright The Dream Coach comes to carry you away.

Great Coach, great Coach, how fat and bright your sides, To please the child who rides! Painted with funny men—see that one’s hose, How blue! How red and long is that one’s nose! And under this one’s arm a flapping cock!

Great dandelions tell us what o’clock With silver globe much bigger than the moon—— Dream Coach, come soon! Come soon!

What pretty pictures! Angels at their play, And brown and lilac butterflies, and spray Of stars, and animals from far away, Grey elephants, a bright pink water bird; Things lovely and absurd.

As the wheels turn, they wake to lovely sound, Musical boxes—as the wheels go round They play a little silver spray of notes: “Swift Runs the River”—“Bluebells in the Wood”—— “The Waterfall”—“The Child Who Has Been Good”—— Like splash of foam at keel of little boats.

Under a sky of duck-egg green Have you not seen The hundred misty horses that delight To draw the coach all night, And the queer little Driver sitting high, And singing to the sky?

His hat is as tall as a cypress tree, His hair is as white as snow; His cheeks and his nose are as red as can be; He sings: “Come along! Come along with me!” Let us go! Let us go! His coat is speckledy red and black, His boots are as green as a beetle’s back, His beard has a fringe of silver bells And scarlet berries and small white shells, And as through the night the Dream Coach gleams, The song he sings like a banner streams: “Nothing is real in all the world, Nothing is real but dreams.”

Through sound of rain the Dream Coach gallops fast. All those that we have loved are riding there: I hear their laughter on the misty air. I wait for you—I have been waiting long: Far off I hear the Driver’s tiny song—— Oh, Dream Coach! Come at last! (From Knee-High to a Grasshopper.)

The Seven White Dreams of the King’s Little Daughter

When the Driver of the Dream Coach reached the last small star in the sky, he unharnessed his hundred misty horses and put them out to pasture in the great blue meadow of Heaven. It was well he reached the end of his journey when he did, for in another moment a mounting wave of sunlight and wind, rushing up from the world far below, blew out the silver-white flame of the star so that no one could follow the strange Driver and his strange Coach to their resting place.

Resting place? What a mistake! The Driver of the Dream Coach never rests. You see, there are so many things to do even when he is carrying no passengers. There are new dreams to invent: queer dreams, funny dreams, fairy dreams, goblin dreams, happy dreams, exciting dreams, short dreams, long dreams, brightly colored dreams, and dreams made out of shadows and mist that vanish as soon as one opens one’s eyes. Then there is the very bothersome matter of keeping the records straight, records of those who deserve good dreams, those who need cheering with ridiculous dreams, and those, alas, who have been bad and naughty and have to be punished (how the little Driver hates this!) with nightmares. It is hard to keep all those dreams from getting mixed up, there are so many of them. Indeed, sometimes, they do get mixed up, and a good child, who was meant to have a dream as pretty as a pansy or as funny as a frog, gets a nightmare by mistake. But the Driver of the Dream Coach tries as hard as he possibly can never to let this happen. He has so very much to do that he never would catch up with his work no matter how quickly his beautiful horses galloped from star to star, from world to world, if there was not some one to help him.

There are little angels who help the Driver of the Dream Coach.

In their gold and white book they keep a record of every one on earth.

As soon as the Driver of the Dream Coach had unharnessed his horses he went to these angels and planned his next trip. What a busy night it was to be! If I should use all the paper and all the pencils in the world I could not begin to tell you about all the dreams he arranged to carry to the sleeping world.

And yet there was one child who was nearly forgotten, a little Princess whose name had been written at the top of a new page which the Driver had neglected to turn in his hurry.

“Surely you are not going to forget the little Princess on her birthday!” pleaded the little angels, turning the page.

“Oh, dear!” said the Driver. “That will never do; now, will it? And yet—I simply can’t pack another dream into the Coach. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid——”

“Oh, dear!” echoed the angels.

“Perhaps——”

Just then one of the youngest angels, who happened to be leaning over the parapet of Paradise, saw the Princess begin to cry, and took in the situation instantly. So he hurried to the others and suggested that he himself should carry a dream to the little Princess.

The Driver of the Dream Coach thought this was a splendid idea and thanked him again and again for his help.

That is how the seven white dreams of the King’s little daughter were carried to her by an angel, and as you know (or if you don’t, I will tell you) the dreams carried in the moonbeam basket of the angels are the most beautiful of all.

What did the Princess dream?

That you shall hear.

I cannot remember all the names of the King’s little daughter, and indeed few can. The Archbishop who christened her says that he can, but he is so great and so deaf a dignitary that no one would think of asking him to prove it. They are all there, twelve pages of them, in the great book where are recorded the baptisms of all the Royal babies, so that you can look for yourself if none of the ones I can remember—Angelica Mary Delphine Violet Candida Pamelia Petronella Victoire Veronica Monica Anastasia Yvonne—happen to please you.

It was the fifth birthday of the little Princess, and there were to be great celebrations in her honor. Fireworks would blossom in the night sky, and in the gardens lanterns were hung like bubbles of colored light from white rose tree to red, while the great fountains would turn from pink to mauve, from mauve to azure, to amber, and to green, as they flung up slender stems and great spreading lacy fronds of water. Every one from the King down to the smallest kitchen-maid had new clothes for the occasion, and the Chief Cook had created a birthday cake iced with fairy grottoes and gardens of spun sugar, so huge and so heavy that the Princess’s ten pages in their new sky-blue and silver liveries, staggered under the weight of it.

The little Princess had a new gown of white satin, sewn so thickly with pearls that it was perfectly stiff, and stood as well without her as when she was inside it. It was standing by her bedside when the bells of the city awoke her on her birthday morning, together with her silver bath shaped like a great shell, and her nine lace petticoats, and her hoops to go over the petticoats, and her little white slippers on a cushion of cloth-of-silver, and her whalebone stays, and her cobweb stockings, and her ten Ladies-In-Waiting, Grand Duchesses every one. When she opened her blue eyes they all swept her the deepest curtsies, their skirts of bright brocade billowing up about them, and said together:

“Long Life and Happiness to Your Serene Highness!” and then the first Grand Duchess popped her out of bed and into her bath, where she got a great deal of soap in the Princess’s eyes while she conversed in a most respectful and edifying manner.

The second Grand Duchess, who was Lady-In-Waiting-In-Charge-Of-The-Imperial-Towel, was even more respectful, and nearly rubbed the Princess’s tiny button of a nose entirely off her face.

The third Grand Duchess brushed and combed the little duck tails of yellow silk that covered the Royal head; and oh, how she did pull!

The fourth Grand Duchess was Lady-In-Waiting-In-Charge-Of-The-Imperial-Shift, and as she was rather old and slow, although extremely noble, the Princess grew cold indeed before the shift covered up her little pink body.

The fifth Grand Duchess put on the rigid stays.

The sixth put on the stockings and slippers.

The seventh was very important and gave herself airs, for the nine lace petticoats were her concern.

The eighth Grand Duchess was Lady-In-Waiting-In-Charge-Of-The-Imperial-Hoops.

The ninth put on the little Princess the dress of satin and pearls, that glowed softly like moonlit drops of water.

And the tenth Grand Duchess, the oldest and ugliest and noblest and crossest and most respectful of them all, placed on the yellow head the little frosty crown of diamonds.

Then the Princess’s Father Confessor, a very noble Prince of the Church, dressed in violet from top to toe, came in between two little boys in lace, and said a long prayer in Latin. It was so long that, I am sorry to have to tell you, right in the middle the Princess yawned, so of course another long prayer had to be said to ask Heaven to overlook such shocking wickedness on the part of Her Highness.

Then the Chief-Steward-In-Attendance-On-The-Princess brought her breakfast—bread and milk in a silver porringer. The little Princess had hoped for strawberries, as it was her birthday, but the Chief Gardener was saving every strawberry in the Royal gardens for the great Birthday Banquet that was to be held that evening.

Then the little Princess went to say good morning to her Mother and Father, and this is the way she went.