t its folds concealed.

CHAPTER X.

DREAMS.

I went to bed early, and tried in vain to sleep. The events of the day
passed continually through my brain, and brought on a nervous headache.
All the blood in my body seemed concentrated in my head, leaving my
feet and hands paralyzed with cold. After tossing about for many hours,
I dropped off into a sort of mesmeric sleep, full of confused images,
among which the singular face of Dinah North haunted me like the genius
of the night-mare.

Dreams are one of the greatest mysteries in the unsolved problem of
life. I have been a dreamer from my cradle, and if any person could
explain the phenomena, the practical experience of a long life ought to
have invested me with that power.

Most persons, in spite of themselves, or what they consider to be their
better judgment, attach a superstitious importance to these visions of
the night; nor is the vague belief in the spiritual agency employed in
dreams, diminished by the remarkable dreams and their fulfilment, which
are recorded in Holy Writ, the verity of which we are taught to believe
as an article of faith.

My eyes are scarcely closed in sleep, before I become an actor in
scenes of the most ludicrous or terrific nature. All my mental and
physical faculties become intensified, and enjoy the highest state of
perfection; as if the soul centered in itself the qualities of its
mysterious triune existence.

Beautiful visions float before the sight, such as the waking eye never
beheld; and the ear is ravished with music which no earthly skill could
produce. The dreaming sense magnifies all sounds and sights which exist
in nature. The thunder deepens its sonorous tone, ocean sends up a
louder voice, and the whirlwind shakes the bending forest with tenfold
fury.

I have beheld in sleep the mountains reel; the yawning earth disclose
her hidden depths, and the fiery abyss swarm with hideous forms, which
no waking eye could contemplate, and the mind retain its rationality. I
have beheld the shrinking sea yield up the dead of ages, and have found
myself a guilty and condemned wretch, trembling at the bar of Eternal
Justice.

"Oh! what have I not beheld in sleep?"

I have been shut up, a living sentient creature in the cold, dank,
noisome grave; have felt the loathsome worm slide along my warm,
quivering limbs; the toad find a resting-place upon my breast; the
adder wreath her slimy folds round my swelling throat; have s