e will see if your malignant old woman will venture
to join our company." The patient accepted the proposal with hope and
gratitude, for he had expected ridicule rather than sympathy. They met
at dinner, and Dr. Gregory, who suspected some nervous disorder, exerted
his powers of conversation, well known to be of the most varied and
brilliant character, to keep the attention of his host engaged, and
prevent him from thinking on the approach of the fated hour, to which he
was accustomed to look forward with so much terror. He succeeded in his
purpose better than he had hoped. The hour of six came almost unnoticed,
and it was hoped might pass away without any evil consequence; but it
was scarce a moment struck when the owner of the house exclaimed, in an
alarmed voice, "The hag comes again!" and dropped back in his chair in a
swoon, in the way he had himself described. The physician caused him to
be let blood, and satisfied himself that the periodical shocks of which
his patient complained arose from a tendency to apoplexy.

The phantom with the crutch was only a species of machinery, such as
that with which fancy is found to supply the disorder called
_Ephialtes_, or nightmare, or indeed any other external impression upon
our organs in sleep, which the patient's morbid imagination may
introduce into the dream preceding the swoon. In the nightmare an
oppression and suffocation is felt, and our fancy instantly conjures up
a spectre to lie on our bosom. In like manner it may be remarked, that
any sudden noise which the slumberer hears, without being actually
awakened by it--any casual touch of his person occurring in the same
manner--becomes instantly adopted in his dream, and accommodated to the
tenor of the current train of thought, whatever that may happen to be;
and nothing is more remarkable than the rapidity with which imagination
supplies a complete explanation of the interruption, according to the
previous train of ideas expressed in the dream, even when scarce a
moment of time is allowed for that purpose. In dreaming, for example, of
a duel, the external sound becomes, in the twinkling of an eye, the
discharge of the combatants' pistols;--is an orator haranguing in his
sleep, the sound becomes the applause of his supposed audience;--is the
dreamer wandering among supposed ruins, the noise is that of the fall of
some part of the mass. In short, an explanatory system is adopted during
sleep with such extreme rapidity,