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Haunting Dreams

garden at last. Time is not 'of the essence of the contract' in dreams, and I have been at it a long time now.

"In another dream I am in a house. It is my own, but in my dream I always make the discovery that it is much larger than I had supposed. It comes upon me as a surprise that I should have lived in the house so long without discovering that it contained suites of rooms of whose existence I was quite ignorant. I find in these newly-discovered rooms much strange furniture, always a pleasing discovery.

"But there are apartments into which I cannot go, because they are 'haunted.' Bogies, spectres, weird shapes peer from cupboards and curtained recesses, and occasionally come out to menace the intrepid explorer. I begin by defying the ghosts and trying to hunt them out, but in the end they always hunt me, and force me to take refuge in the rooms with which I am familiar in my waking hours.

"This dream has recurred at intervals for years, and I hope it will continue to do so, because, although the scene is always the same, there is an agreeable variety in each presentation of the dream-drama. The puzzle is why some of the situations surprise me, who am presumably the 'sole and onlie begetter' of the comedy, and also why I am so frequently the under-dog when, as actor-manager of my own dream, I might expect to be the hero of the piece."


A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK,

the able editor of the Bookman, and himself a novelist and poet of distinction, says: "I had a dream a good many years ago, in which the second and third began where the first and second left off. I have entirely forgotten all details of it, and it can scarcely be called 'recurring.' I have had another that has come three or four times at longish intervals in the last ten years or so. Each time I have met, in a room my waking eyes have never seen, four friends.

"The odd thing is that two are dead and two living, and the last two never met the first two in life, nor, so far as I know, ever heard of them. In the dream, I am aware that two of the party are dead, but there seems nothing remarkable in the fact of their being there. Nothing happens. We merely sit and talk, and, though on waking I can remember the room and the people, I cannot recall anything we said to each other. An inconsequent affair that even a psycho-analyst would hardly furnish with any significance."


GEORGE RUSSELL,

poet, Irish patriot, distinguished artist, and able publicist, whose diphthong signature "Æ" is known everywhere, writes: "I never had a dream which recurred in the same form. But many years ago, at intervals of many months, I had dreams which were all concerned with my journeys to a certain place, or my return from that place. I could always remember starting out on the journey, or my return, but never anything about the place itself or what happened there. I always went with delight and expectation, and always returned in a frenzy of haste, as if everything in life depended on my swift return.

"I always connected these dreams with each other, but the circumstance of voyage there and back differed, and all I know of the place was that it was in a great city and the purpose of my visit was a council on important matters. I cannot say whether my haste in return was to escape the nocturnal police or whether it was because, if I were delayed, I had not wherewithal to support myself in the dream city, and would be an outcast there. That is the nearest experience of a recurrent dream I can remember."


H. DE VERE STACPOOLE,

whose fine novel, "The Garden of God," is at present one of the main features of this magazine, is still another victim of the railway dream.

"Either an engine is trying to ride me down," he says, "or I am running to catch a train which I always miss. The other night I was trying to reach Marseilles by the Underground (Inner Circle) train. I have generally discovered that I have lost my ticket on these excursions—that is if I manage to catch a train; either that, or I have all my dogs with me, and have forgotten to buy them tickets.

"The other dream is flying, or, at least, floating. I am so light that a touch of my finger on the floor will raise me like a penny balloon. This is a delightful dream till one wakes up to find oneself fourteen stone again!"