It so happened that some years ago, one calm warm September day, I found myself on the same heath that, in my Arabian dreams, I called mine. Not a breath of wind crept among the purple heather; the air was sultry and heavy, the distant hills that bounded the view seemed to float like clouds around the immense plain, and assumed the appearances of houses, towns, castles, men, and animals: but all was vague in outline, and ever shifting, as the images seen in dreams. A cottage would expand into a church, and that again into a pyramid; here, suddenly uprose one spire; then, as suddenly sank another; a man turned into a horse, and that again into an elephant; here glided a little boat, and there, a ship with every sail spread. Long did my delighted eyes gaze on these fantastic figures--a panorama that only the mariner or the wanderer of the desert has ever the pleasure of beholding--when, becoming a prey to hunger and to thirst, I began to look for a real house among the many false ones in my sight. I longed most earnestly to exchange all my beautiful fairy palaces for one single peasant's cottage. My wishes were granted: I descried at length a real tenement, without spires or towers, whose outline became sharper and more defined the nearer I approached, and which, flanked by stacks of peat, looked larger than it really was.
The inhabitants were unknown to me. Their clothing was poor; their furniture of the plainest description; but I knew that dwellers on the heath often hid their precious metal in some secret depository, and that a tattered garb sometimes concealed a well-lined pocket-book. When, on going in, I observed a recess filled with stockings, I shrewdly guessed that I had introduced myself into the abode of a wealthy hosier (in a parenthesis be it said, that I never knew a poor one).
An elderly, grey-haired, but still vigorous man, advanced to meet me, and with a cordial 'welcome' offered me his hand. 'May I be permitted to ask,' he added, 'where my guest comes from?' One must not take umbrage at so blunt and unmannerly a question. The rustic of the heath is almost as hospitable as the Scotch lairds, though rather more inquisitive; but, after all, one cannot blame him that he seeks to know whom he entertains. When I had enlightened him as to who I was and whence I came, he called his wife, who without loss of time set before me the best the house contained, kindly inviting me to partake of it; an invitation which I was not slow in accepting.