noon
I , therefore , went northward , till I came to the British Museum , the cataloguing-system of which I knew well , and passed in . There was no one at the library-door to bid me stop , and in the great round reading-room not a soul , except one old man with a bag of goître hung at his neck , and spectacles , he lying up a book-ladder near the shelves , a ` reader ' to the last . I got to the printed catalogues , and for an hour was upstairs among the dim sacred galleries of this still place , and at the sight of certain Greek and Coptic papyri , charters , seals , had such a dream of this ancient earth , my good God , as even an angel 's pen could not half express on paper . Afterwards , I went away loaded with a good hundred-weight of Ordnance-maps , which I had stuffed into a bag found in the cloak-room , with three topographical books ; I then , at an instrument-maker 's in Holborn , got a sextant and theodolite , and at a grocer 's near the river put into a sack-bag provisions to last me a week or two ; at Blackfriars Bridge wharf-station I found a little sharp white steamer of a few tons , which happily was driven by liquid air , so that I had no troublesome fire to light : and by noon I was cutting my solitary way up the Thames , which flowed as before the ancient Britons were born , and saw it , and built mud-huts there amid the primaeval forest ; and afterwards the Romans came , and saw it , and called it Tamesis , or Thamesis . * * * * * That night , as I lay asleep on the cabin-cushions of my little boat under the lee of an island at Richmond , I had a clear dream , in which something , or someone , came to me , and asked me a question : for it said : ` Why do you go seeking another man ? -- that you may fall upon him , and kiss him ? or that you may fall upon him , and murder him ? '