Article July 23, 2012 Issue

Marjorie and the Dream

Phyllis W. Zeno

When I was very young, my mother used to read to me from an eight-volume series called Marjorie and the Dream by Katherine M. Yates.

My favorite in the series was titled On the Way There, recommended by Mary Baker Eddy (see Sentinel, August 27, 1904). It was a story about a somewhat willful little girl named Marjorie, and her contemptuous nightly companion, the Dream, an elf-like figure who sat on the footboard of her bed and taunted her when she was trying to go to sleep. Eventually the Dream agrees to take Marjorie to a nice place, but warns her it isn’t so nice on the way there. 

As they begin their journey through the swamps and mud, she notices that there are other children going in the same direction, but they are bogged down by ugly little dwarfs who are clinging to them, biting and pinching them. These are Errors, she is told. And before very long, as she looks jealously at a little girl with long blond hair, Marjorie is bitten by one of the Errors as well—Envy.