I found myself walking through a large park with an old family friend--let us call her Miss Tweedletop--a somewhat characterless, colourless lady whom I had not even seen for years. Such persons have a habit of popping up in dreams years after we have apparently ceased to give them even a passing thought. They travel, by what devious ways we cannot imagine, into our subconscious minds, look around them bravely and then, shaking the mud off their shoes and taking a deep breath, they somehow contrive to jump up into our dreams. Miss Tweedletop and I, then, were walking through this park, and I knew somehow that we were really one unit of a fairly large party of friends who had all come out for a day's pleasure and sightseeing.

How I knew this I do not know, because the dream seemed to begin at the point when we had either lagged behind or outdistanced the main body, which I never saw at all. All my dreams appear to be tiny instalments of an enormous feuilleton: I never know the beginning or the end, although I am one of the chief actors, and also, they tell me, the dramatist, producer, and scene-shifter. But I always know a little of what has gone before; I give myself, as it were, a hint of the situation before I set myself on the stage; and on this occasion I knew that we were both members of a sightseeing party.

We were strolling down a sort of carriage drive that swept forward, as such things usually do if there is space for it, in a vast curve. The place was not unlike Richmond Park but rather more trim and well-ordered; perhaps the private park of some duke or other.

We had walked slowly forward for some time, slowly because Miss Tweedletop is (or was) an elderly woman; and had been idly talking of this and that, when suddenly I saw, only a little way in front, a most curious group, a herd of the most unlikely creatures. They were of various sizes, but the largest would be easily twice the size of a full-grown elephant. They were not unlike elephants in appearance, except that they tapered more noticeably from head (their heads were enormous) to tail, and though they had the same huge flopping ears, they had no trunks.

I am no lion tamer and I confess to being nervous in the presence of all strange animals, but I think that even a lion tamer or an elephant hunter might have felt rather diffident about approaching such creatures, who looked as if they had strayed out of the early chapters of the Outline of History. Miss Tweedletop, however, walked on even after she had noticed the astonishing brutes we were gradually approaching.

"Ah," she exclaimed, but rather slowly, like one who makes small talk, "there are the Berkshire Beasts." She said it quite casually, just as people say "There is the County Court" or "There is the Albert Memorial" when they are not excited about the matter themselves nor expect you to be excited about it, but are simply making talk. I could see that Miss Tweedletop thought I knew as much about the Berkshire Beasts as she and every one else did.

By this time they were much closer, and I could see that they were a dark green colour and rather wrinkly and shiny, not unlike something between a cheap kind of lady's handbag and one of those foul and unnatural editions of the poets that are bought only as presents; but many thousands of times bigger than the most capacious handbag or the largest edition of Tennyson ever known. They looked bigger than ever.

And then I noticed that every one of them, male or female, old or young, was wearing spectacles. Yes, spectacles, rimless spectacles of the kind affected by very intelligent, well-informed persons. They were, of course, much larger than our spectacles; indeed, I noticed that each lens of the spectacles worn by the adult monsters was about the size of an ordinary dinner plate.

As the creatures turned their heads, their glasses gleamed and flashed in the sun. I did not see anything very droll in all this; I remember that I thought it a little odd at the time, but nothing more. Indeed, unless I am mistaken, it appeared to me that the creatures, peering through or over their glasses at us, looked more sinister than ever.

All this I noticed, of course, during the brief interval of time when Miss Tweedletop made her remark. And then, instead of owning that I knew nothing about the Berkshire Beasts and thus giving myself the opportunity of learning something worth knowing in the natural history of dreamland, like a fool, and a cowardly fool, I allowed a bad social habit to overmaster me, and replied, equally casually, "Ah, yes. The Berkshire Beasts." I might have been their keeper for years; I might have spent half my lifetime tracking them down and capturing them in their native haunts (and what haunts they must have had!); I might have been the crazy oculist who had fitted them with their spectacles; so casually did I reply.

But meanwhile, I had come to the conclusion that it was high time we turned back. One or two of them were moving in a leisurely but awe-inspiring fashion in our direction, and we were still walking towards them, as if they had been mere cattle or sheep and not monstrosities twenty feet high.

True, their spectacles suggested that they were not ordinary monsters, that they knew something of the decencies and courtesies of life, and even hinted, as glasses always do, at a bookish pacifism, a ferocity strictly confined to polemics and debate. Why we should generally associate short sight with good nature is rather a mystery, but we do, and there is always something peculiarly revolting and unnatural about a spectacled murderer, just as there would be about a baby who was caught trying to poison its nurse.

One monster detached itself from the others, perhaps it was the leader as it was certainly one of the largest, and moved gigantically toward us and then stood, with lowered head, looking at us over the top of its glasses, not ten yards away. I can see it yet, with its incredible head, dark green wrinkled skin, its spectacles stretched across a broad flat nose that was at least eighteen inches from side to side.

Now or never was the time to turn round and run for it, even though there was no cover, no hiding place, for quite a distance. But the protest died in my throat, for Miss Tweedletop never turned a hair but strolled on with no more concern than she would have had in passing a tobacconist's shop. She did not even seem particularly interested in the creatures; and of course if she knew them and was not afraid, there was no reason for me to fear.

But I do not think it was any such piece of reasoning that led me to walk forward by her side without any protest; it was merely the fear of being laughed at by a little old maiden lady. I saw myself being squashed as a boy squashes a black beetle; in a moment or so, those astonishing spectacles would be splashed and reddened by my blood.

But nothing happened. We passed almost under the leading monster's nose and he did nothing but survey us a little sadly and sceptically. It was incredible; the rimless spectacles had won. Perhaps that is why the creatures were made to wear them; before, when they were merely ordinary monsters without glasses, they were probably the most ferocious and dangerous creatures in the world, but now, simply with the addition of these contrivances of glass and wire, they were more gentle than most of our fellow humans. Probably the females were learning to knit monstrously, and the males were cultivating philosophical interests and debated among themselves as to the Knower and the Known.

But as to that, I shall never be sure.

Something, however, I did learn, for Miss Tweedletop made two more remarks before she tripped back into the lumber room of my uncared-for memories.

"You know," she said, as casually as ever, "they're only kept now for their singing."

If she was as casual, I was as foolish as before, for instead of boldly pressing for an explanation after admitting my ignorance, I still concealed it and remarked: "Really? Only for their singing?" No doubt I thought that, later, perhaps when we had joined the others, by putting a question here and there I could learn all I wanted without confessing my ignorance. If so, I was sadly disappointed, and was rightly served for my foolishness. Miss Tweedletop seemed faintly indignant, as if the tone of my reply cast a shade of doubt upon the ability of the beasts.

"Yes," she said, rather reproachfully, "but they sing so beautifully."

And then not a word more, for suddenly she and the monsters and the park and the bright summer day were all huddled away into the playbox of the night and I found my nose sniffing at the cold morning, and myself further from that park than I am from Sirius.

Somewhere in the limbo of dreams, there is a park in which, perhaps, the Berkshire Beasts, like the morning stars, are singing together, singing so beautifully.