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The Witnesses – Thomas Hennell

There came the printed words, A Perfect Dream and a vision.

A landscape of grass meadows, in America, where there were fowl runs of wire netting; and a lettered sign to the effect that ten cents per person was the price for sleeping here.

Near by was a tall white mill.  But when some people who had travelled hither with bicycles went in to rest, a whirlwind approached, the mill was shaken from its foundations and its timbers like a pack of cards involved with the netting, which unfortunately covered the ground, and so those within were enclosed with it, and disgustingly distorted as the wire and the planks spindled out upon the tempest.  This was a more horrid threat, and not less convincing, than our doomsday.

I never knew till now what visions were; whatever horrible suggestions came from some of them, they were never less than wonderful; a rarer air and light, far more exquisite colour, and a completeness of grandeur was with them.  And this may, in part, have been a natural compensation for this mean and ill smelling place, and the deprivation of nature and sunlight; but it was more like the first enjoyment of a new faculty.  From what hidden signs are the seeds gathered from which such flowers bloom on the mind’s vision?

Are they written by the stars on pebbles; or could a power of magnificence have been reflected from the untouched transfiguration?