"You will say now, of course, that I dreamed; but not so. What I
saw--what I heard--what I felt--what I thought--had about it nothing
of the unmistakable idiosyncrasy of the dream. All was rigorously
self-consistent. At first, doubting that I was really awake, I entered
into a series of tests, which soon convinced me that I really was.
Now, when one dreams, and, in the dream, suspects that he dreams, the
suspicion never fails to confirm itself, and the sleeper is almost
immediately aroused. Thus Novalis errs not in saying that 'we are near
waking when we dream that we dream.' Had the vision occurred to me as I
describe it, without my suspecting it as a dream, then a dream it might
absolutely have been, but, occurring as it did, and suspected and tested
as it was, I am forced to class it among other phenomena."

"In this I am not sure that you are wrong," observed Dr. Templeton, "but
proceed. You arose and descended into the city."

"I arose," continued Bedloe, regarding the Doctor with an air of
profound astonishment "I arose, as you say, and descended into the city.
On my way I fell in with an immense populace, crowding through every
avenue, all in the same direction, and exhibiting in every action the
wildest excitement. Very suddenly, and by some inconceivable impulse, I
became intensely imbued with personal interest in what was going on.
I seemed to feel that I had an important part to play, without exactly
understanding what it was. Against the crowd which environed me,
however, I experienced a deep sentiment of animosity. I shrank from amid
them, and, swiftly, by a circuitous path, reached and entered the city.
Here all was the wildest tumult and contention. A small party of men,
clad in garments half-Indian, half-European, and officered by gentlemen
in a uniform partly British, were engaged, at great odds, with the
swarming rabble of the alleys. I joined the weaker party, arming myself
with the weapons of a fallen officer, and fighting I knew not whom with
the nervous ferocity of despair. We were soon overpowered by numbers,
and driven to seek refuge in a species of kiosk. Here we barricaded
ourselves, and, for the present were secure. From a loop-hole near the
summit of the kiosk, I perceived a vast crowd, in furious agitation,
surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that overhung the river.
Presently, from an upper window of this place, there descended an
effeminate-looking person, by means of a string made