DREAMS OF GOLD FULFILLED

Evening Star, Issue 18262, 30 April 1923, Page 3

DREAMS OF GOLD FULFILLED

STRANGE TALES. [By “Argonaut,” in the Melbourne ‘Age.’] At last the subject of dreams is being analysed by the scientists and philosophers. Freud reduces them to the reactions of the surplus energy of conscious and pent-up emotions; Bergson, to the surplus of unconscious effort (of a kind) overflowing in developmental energies, commonly called evolution. If either or both of them and their school be correct, then their theories only amount to this : that life (Chat is, ourselves) is only “such stuff as dreams are made of." From this angle of vision our Shakespeare _ has _ uttered again, not a final, but an illuminative, word of a more or jess mysterious insight. But if insight be" a mysterious process by which it proceeds on its course to its end, then science must treat it with the same humility with which it has been forced to treat revelation. Can science distinguish between the two contrasted terms, revelation and evolution? Here one is concerned with that most common of dreams,-the dreams of gold. Coincidence, chance, luck, and even the mathematics of probabilities may dispose of some illusions and determine the results according to the rules of the nulltinlication or other tables or standards, and leave ns there. But here follow three instances, every detail of which is known to the writer, and remain inexplicable when the resources of all these lojncal and other explanations arc exhausted, t tie end is an unconscious process at every step, and every step is as marvellous as the end itself—if one is left only )'itn the aid of these materialistic explanations. The hero of two of the stones approaches his ends from two apparently opposite motive points of view nr calculation. Yet the ends are the same. Ihe first began with a dream, reminiscent o, all 'the fairy stories or fairy gold anti happiness ever afterwards which all or us have learnt sometimes in onr mother s arms, and oftener at her knees, when sleep was calling to those realms where perhaps the known, the. unknown, and the unknowable present themselves at times in strange and inexplicable transition. Ho was young, vigorous, fairly well educated in* the primary sense of the words, imaginative—and an Irishman, rle came to Australia as an immigrant, probably enticed there bv the rumors, reports, or lures of its gold. At the first of its soil he hurried off to a whose treasures chance or nn accident had revealed. Whatever dreams he had, ne subdued them to service at the business ends of the shovels, picks hammers, and drills awaiting capable and willing hand . He set to work there, and saved every penny beyond the cost of decent subsisteuc* Soon, within and behind the toil, one insistent vision and inspiration not only possessed but urged him on. He fell in love with the maul, who was really the manageress, of the hotel at ' vhlph ¥ stayed. She was Irish, too, and though no yet she too, had her dreams. She was as handsome as she « true and loyal to her trust-and hersmf. tq ie had as often refused as she had spurned the lure of .gold lavished at Jer hands and feet “ with a love both false mid true.” He saw this, and determined to put his fate or deserts to tne touch to win or lose it all. • She accepted it, and both spoke of th ir futures— and their dreams. She bade him wait. When he had worked, and saved enough he spoke of the marriage dayHis happiness—or fate—was crossed with a busines's proposition. He had an option over a one-fifth share in a, prospecting tribute. It would expire in a week. Ho thought a great deal of the chance, but if he took it it would absorb all Ins savings and more, and the marriage would have to be postponed. He frankly told hei that he would rather take her as ms wife than all the gold in all the world, and it was for her to decide. She bade him wait a week for her answer When he came for it she told him to accept the option. She had dreamed that their fortunes were assured with it. She. had trusted him so far, and would trust him to the end of his life, whenever and however lie needed her love and help. He did as she suggested, and it ended as all such fairy stories end. Some £700,000 was taken out of that tribute, and one of the lion’s shares of it fell to their hands. All faithful Moslems make, if they can, their pilgrimage to Mecca. This bridal couple returned to Ireland. Some years afterwards the scientists and financial experts took the place of dreams and dreamers. As if in derision, the gold eluded their search in the formerly richest portion of the field.' There was one last hope for the experts—the amalgamation of the adjoining lessees in the risk and cost of driving a large shaft from the surface downwards to I,oooft or more. The experts drew their plans and reports, pronouncing it a fair business risk and a good mining speculation. Our hero, now in Ireland, held a controlling interest in some of these. The plans and reports were sent to him. He vetoed them, deferring final decision till he could revisit the field. He was confidently pitting Ids untrained against the best scientific and expert intelligence, thus loading the odds against himself. On his arrival a meeting of the directors and experts was held. Taking down the surface plan, he crossed out the spot marked for the commencement of the. shaft, and on the opposite portion marked out a new site in a red pencil cross. He then said that he would take up half the whole amount of the cost in fully paid up shares, if allotted to him. “ Toujours I'audace.” His bid was accepted and followed. Daily he supervised the operations. Days grew into weeks and weeks into months, and still no trace nor sign of the traces of the elusive gold. Still he persevered, till he became the stock joke of all the local wits and music halls. He was regarded as the architect of a monumental folly; a dreamer throwing his dream gold back into the earth whence he had won it. One morning the dynamite revealed a miniature Golconda at the depths to which he agreed to go. Ho had treated his critics with scorn, and as silently and contemptuously he concluded the rest of the business, which left the half of all that future wealth in his hands. For years afterwards in his library in Ireland a plain map with that red cross mark on it hung in a conspicuous position. If you were an Australian, and knew anything of that town there and) its mining operations and) fortunes, he would welcome yon with Irish hospitality and perhaps tell you th© story. If you ventured) curiously to ask him why he brushed the experts aside and ventured confidently so much, all ho would say was 11 1 knew.” That was the truth, but nob the whole truth, for ho knew not why or how he knew, nor can such men ever know how the portals are opened to and for them with such mystic keys in their hands. Of these they know little or nothing themselves. Out of these very things another incident arose. Analyse it as one may, it becomes but the more mysterious. Some years after the incident recorded above the manager of a leading firm of stock brokers on this field received a peremptory order to purchase largely certain lines of mining scrip each named distinctly in the order. The order was so large end peremptory that he demanded) confirmation and advised against the procedure. He was told to execute it at once. The next day he received a telegram from a firm of solicitors in the capital asking him if he had received and executed such an order. He properly declined to disclose. He was then informed that the solicitors were acting on behalf of the lunatic’s estate, and that the client mentioned was now in the reception house, and was clearly ‘‘non compos” at the time of despatching the order. In the circumstances they were bound to repudiate the contracts, and would hold the firm liable. It was a position bristling with legal difficulties, and so the matter had to be left in the lawyers’ hands and to the law’s delays. In the meantime, however, the shares purchased) all rose strongly on Hie market and remained there, whilst some others kept mounting skywards. There was no “lame duck” in the whole group purchased. The firm was “on velvet,” and the lunatic’s estate had realised a fortune.

But the investigation of the affairs of the estate revealed an even deeper mystery. The client was the managing partner of a largo and long-established commercial business in the capital, and had ruined it by reckless plunging mid gambling in mining scrip. On the morning on which he had despatched his telegram his current account was less than wan absolutely necessary to meet his daily current obligation. He flung this on one lost throw of the dice, and then collapsed in madness. He lingered l for a few years in the lunatic asylum, and left it only in his coffin. At one sudden stroke he lost all memory of past events ard things. His memory was a, total blank, from which even the faces of his wife and children were hidden in total and impenetrable oblivion, nor could their tender and continuous care and nursing revive even a trace of recognition. His wife never' left his bedside during his dying hours. She clung on in the hope that tho hand of approaching death would cast one last and illuminative, if sudden, ray on the oblivion of the past, and that there might be granted to him a. moment of intelligence in which to inform him, ere he left for ever the scene of his last desperate throw on her and her children’s behalf, that it was well with them that he had done so. His corps© carried ora its face the benediction of her tears; and perhaps they won for him atonement, in that balance of final and merciful adjustment of all our struggles, efforts, and hopes. Tho facte merge and mingle with dreams, and in parts deepen down together into impenetrate© mystery. That sumo individuals possess some of these mystic powers seems unquestionable. They are as rare and wayward as genius, which itself is a mystery even to the rare possessors of it. But just a final glance at those bournes from another angle. Coleridge wrote ‘ Kubla Khan’ in nn interrupted day dream, and never after could add a line on which to follow out that vision. How much of Poe’s writings are reflections of dreams within his dreams, who can tell, now or ever? Keats, looking at a plum tree in the garden through a window in Wordsworth’s house., notes the birds there. He goes down, wrapt in a suggestive mood or ecstasy, sits on a seat underneath its branches, and writes out his immortal ‘Ode to a Nightingale ’ on loose scraps of paper. Napoleon, starving in a garret, dreams over the possible military position of Austrian armies in Sardinia, and their destruction by a French Republican army. He sends it into the War Office, whore the dream becomes dust. Three years afterwards ho enters Mantua in triumph on the road of which he dreamed in his garret. This but recalls a stranger episode in his career. Across his leaving certificate from the Brienne Military College the examiner wrote: “Given to dreaming," The world’s greatest and swiftest man of action described (not inaccurately) as “ a dreamer ” ! So they are blended), and so it is that Shakespeare again has another final word on tho subject:— There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.