hat ensued Freddy
and I sprang forward, darted through the archway, and, making the best
use of our legs, soon found ourselves in the open fields, and quite
beyond the reach of pursuit.

CHAPTER XVI -- THE ROMAN FATHER

"If a dream should come in now to make you afear'd,
With a wind-mill on his head, and bells at his beard;
Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes,
And your boots on your brows, and your spurs on your nose?"
--_Ben Jonson_.

"No-----he
With more than Roman fortitude is ever
First at the board in this unhappy process
Against his last and only son."
--_The Two Foscari._

DREAMS, ye strange mysterious visions of the soul! Ye wild and freakish
gambolings of the spirit, freed from the incubus of matter, and
unfettered by the control of reason, of what fantastic caprices are ye
the originators ~137~~--what caricatures of the various features of our
waking life do ye not exhibit to us, ludicrous and distorted indeed, but
still preserving through their most extravagant exaggerations a wayward
and grotesque likeness to the realities they shadow forth! And stranger
even than your most strange vagaries, is the cool matter-of-fact way in
which our sleeping senses calmly accept and acquiesce in the medley of
impossible absurdities you offer to their notice. We conceive ourselves,
for instance, proceeding along a green lane on horseback; the animal
upon which we are mounted becomes suddenly, we know and care not how,
a copper tea-kettle, and we ride quietly on without testifying, or
even feeling, the least symptom of surprise, as though the identity
of hackneys and tea-kettles was a fact generally recognised in natural
history; the kettle perhaps addresses us, it converses with us on all
the subjects which interest us most deeply; and we discuss our various
hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, loves and hates, with no other
sentiment, save a degree of pleasure at the very sensible and
enlightened views which the utensil takes of the matter. I might
multiply examples, ad infinitum, to illustrate my meaning; but to
those who are familiar with the phenomena alluded to one instance will
suffice; while those who have never experienced them will probably,
at all events, take refuge in disbelief, and lament themselves with a
self-satisfying sorrow over the fresh proof it adduces of the truth of
the