resence of
one whose dream-experience is so unhappy. Still, it is true that my
dreams have uses as many and sweet as those of adversity. All my
yearning for the strange, the weird, the ghostlike is gratified in
dreams. They carry me out of the accustomed and commonplace. In a flash,
in the winking of an eye they snatch the burden from my shoulder, the
trivial task from my hand and the pain and disappointment from my heart,
and I behold the lovely face of my dream. It dances round me with merry
measure and darts hither and thither in happy abandon. Sudden, sweet
fancies spring forth from every nook and corner, and delightful
surprises meet me at every turn. A happy dream is more precious than
gold and rubies.

I like to think that in dreams we catch glimpses of a life larger than
our own. We see it as a little child, or as a savage who visits a
civilized nation. Thoughts are imparted to us far above our ordinary
thinking. Feelings nobler and wiser than any we have known thrill us
between heart-beats. For one fleeting night a princelier nature captures
us, and we become as great as our aspirations. I daresay we return to
the little world of our daily activities with as distorted a half-memory
of what we have seen as that of the African who visited England, and
afterwards said he had been in a huge hill which carried him over great
waters. The comprehensiveness of our thought, whether we are asleep or
awake, no doubt depends largely upon our idiosyncrasies, constitution,
habits, and mental capacity. But whatever may be the nature of our
dreams, the mental processes that characterize them are analogous to
those which go on when the mind is not held to attention by the will.

A WAKING DREAM

XV

A WAKING DREAM

I HAVE sat for hours in a sort of reverie, letting my mind have its way
without inhibition and direction, and idly noted down the incessant beat
of thought upon thought, image upon image. I have observed that my
thoughts make all kinds of connections, wind in and out, trace
concentric circles, and break up in eddies of fantasy, just as in
dreams. One day I had a literary frolic with a certain set of thoughts
which dropped in for an afternoon call. I wrote for three or four hours
as they arrived, and the resulting record is much like a dream. I found
that the most disconnected, dissimilar thoughts came in arm-in-arm--I
dreamed a wide-awake dream. The difference is that in waking dreams I
can look b