g-life, she has a remarkably
treacherous memory for poetry, being seldom able to repeat a single
verse even of Isaac Watts without a mistake. Here, however, she had
carried two entire verses safe and sound out of her sleep into her
waking existence. It was therefore a double wonder. She has
accordingly got up a theory, that her mind is at its best in her
sleep, and is judged of at a disadvantage in its daylight moments. In
sleep lies her principal life. Waking is an inferior exceptive kind of
existence, into which she is dragged by the base exigencies of the
world. She ought to be judged of as she is in her dreams. No saying
what she goes through then. Perhaps she is the most active woman in
the world in that state. Possibly she says and does the most brilliant
things, such as nobody else could say or do in any condition. 'You say
you cannot test it, for you cannot follow me into my dream-world.
Well, but it may be as I say; and till you can prove the reverse, I
hold that I am entitled to the presumption which my dream-song
establishes in my favour.' It must be admitted there is some force in
this reasoning. All that her husband can in the meantime say on the
other side, is just this: 'Granted the activity and the brilliancy of
your sleep-life, it does wonderfully little for me or our household
concerns. Only give us an hour more of your sweet company in the
forenoon, and we shall admit you to be in your sleep as stirring and
as clever as you choose to call yourself.' This of course he says very
safely, for he well knows that no earthly consideration would induce
her to abridge her sleep even by that one hour.

At a visit I lately paid to this good couple, I found them debating
these points, the gentleman still refusing to give implicit credence
to the theory which the lady had started in her own favour. The
controversy was conducted with a great deal of good-humour, and I
could not refrain from entering into the discussion. I started,
however, a new theory, which I thought might please both parties, and
in this object I am happy to say I was successful. 'Here,' said I, 'is
a wife remarkable for putting as much good-nature into her six or
eight hours of day-life as most women put into twice the time. No one
can tell what she is in her sleep: perhaps the veriest termagant on
earth. Suppose her sleep could be abridged, might not some of this
termagantism overflow into and be diffused over her waking existence?
I can well