ne. It is the embodiment
of evil. I must have had it first after the day that I nearly got burnt.

Another spirit which visits me often brings a sensation of cool
dampness, such as one feels on a chill November night when the window is
open. The spirit stops just beyond my reach, sways back and forth like a
creature in grief. My blood is chilled, and seems to freeze in my veins.
I try to move, but my body is still, and I cannot even cry out. After a
while the spirit passes on, and I say to myself shudderingly, "That was
Death. I wonder if he has taken her." The pronoun stands for my Teacher.

In my dreams I have sensations, odours, tastes and ideas which I do not
remember to have had in reality. Perhaps they are the glimpses which my
mind catches through the veil of sleep of my earliest babyhood. I have
heard "the trampling of many waters." Sometimes a wonderful light visits
me in sleep. Such a flash and glory as it is! I gaze and gaze until it
vanishes. I smell and taste much as in my waking hours; but the sense of
touch plays a less important part. In sleep I almost never grope. No one
guides me. Even in a crowded street I am self-sufficient, and I enjoy
an independence quite foreign to my physical life. Now I seldom spell on
my fingers, and it is still rarer for others to spell into my hand. My
mind acts independent of my physical organs. I am delighted to be thus
endowed, if only in sleep; for then my soul dons its winged sandals and
joyfully joins the throng of happy beings who dwell beyond the reaches
of bodily sense.

The moral inconsistency of dreams is glaring. Mine grow less and less
accordant with my proper principles. I am nightly hurled into an
unethical medley of extremes. I must either defend another to the last
drop of my blood or condemn him past all repenting. I commit murder,
sleeping, to save the lives of others. I ascribe to those I love best
acts and words which it mortifies me to remember, and I cast reproach
after reproach upon them. It is fortunate for our peace of mind that
most wicked dreams are soon forgotten. Death, sudden and awful, strange
loves and hates remorselessly pursued, cunningly plotted revenge, are
seldom more than dim haunting recollections in the morning, and during
the day they are erased by the normal activities of the mind. Sometimes
immediately on waking, I am so vexed at the memory of a dream-fracas, I
wish I may dream no more. With this wish distinctly before me I drop o