FANTASIES OF THE NIGHT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2809, 15 January 1908, Page 87

FANTASIES OF THE NIGHT.

By a Banker.

A child of earth ia indulging in a long reverie, giving rein to his imagination, and in a flight of fancy casting off the gyves aaid trammoTs of mortality and soaring through the- universes. Gradually sinking into the water of Lethe, his reveries have now aE&umed tangible forni and shape, and he feels th«.t he is no longer subject to the fettering thraldom of earth. Vaulting upwards into the ether, m the flash of a thought he alights upon a co-Id, dead world, ■without air, without without life. Harging threatening !y overhead ia a stupendous and gigantic orb shining brilliantly in the starless heavens and lighting up the rugged sceno-ry with a flood of reflected light, which, from the configuration of the markings on the surface, he recognises to be his native earth ; and he realises that he is upon her satellite. After exploring the wonders ot those huge volcfjric craters — Copernicus, with its mighty upreared walls ; Tycho and Ptolemy, soaring lip to the skies; or Shickard. more wondroua than th-em all, its crater about 400 miles in circumference, and of_ a capacity sufficient to certain perhaps every volcano on carth — depressed at the dismal and melancholy aspect of this dead, cold world, he hies off to vißit that other side of the moon which is for -ever inviaib 1 © to us, and of the aspect of which we know absolutely nothing. Leaving this arid and lifeless wilderness, he speeds a-wiay, past our nest neighbour Mars, rnraveiling the rnysieiy of the great canals, trast mighty Jupi-ter. past stupendous and majestic Saturn, and past other of the planetary 'wonders of th» midnight skies, up to the dazzling glory of the sun itself; the mighty surging tornados of fire and the infuriate whirlwinds of flaming gases ever wildly raging with convulsive energy on its surface, transfixing him with awe and wonder. Then, hurtled into the abyss of space, midst -rushing luminaries careering each with their planetary train on their long orbit round the great central pivot of all the universes of God, midst blazing, coruscating suns in the zenith of theil effulgent lustre, and mddsrt lightless. life.'ess orbs who.se fires have in the long course of the eons faded away into eternal darkness, startled at the overpowering glory of it all, he awake? — and behold it is a dream. I

But although all this is fancy, yet fox those who have not spurned and contemned the commaaiids of their God, but have with Bis never-refused help lived the life of the righteous, and -whose sins, inherited and' committed, have been expunged from the record through the great expiation made on the cross by the Redeemer of mankind — for these a time will come when they on angel ■wing will surety be accorded permission to visit a.Il these wonders of creation and to roam through all this vast and glorious universe.

Cheap Bulbs for«4>resent planting. See NiHiro and Blate's advertisement, page 8 of this issue, for specially cheap lines of Tulips, etc. —On board the steamer Oravia, which sailed from Liverpool the other day for South America, were 50 Scotch shepherds and 72 collie dogs, in addition to a number of prize -Scotch bullocks, ponies, and aheep. — The Government has purchased Inverliver, a Jarge estate in Argyllshire, for conversion into a State forest, and -for use sts | a demonstration area in scientific afforesta tion. At present there are only about 90 acres of enclosed plantation in the estate, which covers 12,530 acres, and it will be a •generation 'before *the 'timber to -be is r ■mature, i