was a failure. This explains why the dream child is named Alice and this explains why he becomes confused about which Alice, younger or elder, he is really looking at:

turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was ...

This leads to the third thematic topic: the children who never were. In a surprise ending, in a dramatic (and at first bewildering) twist, we learn that the children he has been telling stories to--stories of loves and life-joys he regrets losing--are air, are a figment of a dream in a bachelor's sleep. These are the children that would have been, that could have been, that might have been if Alice had granted Lamb her love and if they had wed. As it is, they are but phantoms of a dream. All he really has is "the faithful Bridget [representative of Lamb's sister Mary] unchanged by my side."

In the essay, Elia imagines his two children, Alice and John, coming to sit near him and hear the stories of their great grandmother Fields and their uncle, Elia's older brother, John L. Elia recalls times visiting his grandmother at the estate where she was housekeeper. He also remembers times when he was "lame"—his foot injured—and John L. would carry him around on his back. He recalls, too, that he was impatient when John L.'s foot later became lame, and now, he regrets he wasn't kinder. We realize that both these figures are dead, as is Alice, whom Elia recalls as his late wife. But as he stares at his little girl Alice, who he imagines looking just like his late wife, the children began to get smaller and recede:

both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all."

We realize at this point that Elia has imagined this whole scene. He notes that Alice married someone else, little Alice and John have never been, and he is a bachelor, sitting by the fire with his sister Bridget.

The story is largely autobiographical, in that Lamb lived with his sister, had a lost love, and never married. His memories are of his older brother and his grandmother.

This is a tale of regrets about what could have been, the paths life doesn't take. Elia conveys his desire to have offspring to whom he can transmit the family stories. Since he has no offspring, he invents them and writes an essay that tells the rest of us an idealized story of his past.