"True, I swear! And, please, begin." "You hang for the Fates to settle which is to be smothered in you, the man or the lord-and it ends in the monk, if you hang much longer."

"A bit of a scorpion, in his intention," Fleetwood muttered on a stride. "I'll tell you this, Gower Woodseer; when you lay on in earnest your diction is not so choice. Do any of your remarks apply to Lady Fleetwood?" "All should. I don't presume to allude to Lady Fleetwood."

"She has not charged you to complain?"

"Lady Fleetwood is not the person to complain or condescend to speak of injuries."

been particularly estimable. In the feebleness of a man vainly courting sleep, the disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the other through the remaining hours of darkness, polishing sentences that were natural spouts of choicest diction; and still the Earl's virulent small sneer rankled. He understood why, after a time. The fervor of advocacy which inspires high diction had been wanting. He had sought more to lash the Earl with his personal disgust-and partly to parade his contempt of a lucrative dependency -than he had felt for the Countess. No wonder his diction was poor. It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort of tongue of a Master Slender: flavorless, unsatisfactory, considering its object: measured to be condemned by its poor

A swollen vein on the young nobleman's forehead went to confirm the idea at the Wythans that he was capable of mischief. They were right; he was as capable of villany as of nobility. But he happened to be thanking Gower Woodseer's whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at Carinthia's behavior, while detesting her for causing him to desire it and endure it, and exonerate his prosy castigator.

He was ignorant of the revenge he had on Gower, whose diction had not

heart to feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading for her, especially when it ran to its object, as along a shaft of the sun rays, from the passionate devotedness of that girl Madge.

He brooded over it till it was like a fire beneath him to drive him from his bed and across the turfy roller of the hill to the Wythans, in the front of an autumnal sunrise- grand where the country is shorn of surface decoration, as here and there we find some unadorned human creature, whose bosom bears the ball of warmth.

I WAS lying awake, but with closed eyes, spending the few precious moments between the rising-bell and rising, in the elaboration of one of my favorite daydreams. But gradually I became aware of a little sprig of verbena, standing isolated and distinct before my mental vision, and unpleasantly distracting my thoughts. I tried to banish the impertinent interruption, but try as I might, it would not down, and only grew more and more vivid and insistent. And in some way I was aware that, having thought or created this verbena, I was responsible for it, and that it would continue to plague me until I found means to preserve in it the life I had given. It had little roots, which suggested that it might live, it had also dead leaves, which prophesied decay; and though I was awake -conscious of my surroundings-conscious that the verbena was a figment of my brain-it stared at me and reproached me until I was forced to do its bidding.

With an effort I postponed my dream and prepared to plant this flower of my fancy. I called up the image of my garden-bed, and when it was clearly before me I went all over it seeking a place for the verbena. At first there seemed to be no empty space, but I made one by imagining away all obstacles. Then I mentally manufactured a trowel, dug with it an imaginary hole, and planted the verbena, pressing about it the seeming earth.

Then I would have turned from the unwilling task, to take up the thread of my dream-but no! Limp and dry and accusing, the verbena drooped before me, and I knew I must finish my work. With difficulty, as my imagination grew more and more restive, I thought up a wateringpot. When it materialized it was but a

poor thing-small and battered, and in it scarce a teacupful of water-but I grasped it eagerly and started toward the verbena. And here my mind wandered. I saw a thirsty-looking rosebush, and over it I mentally poured my last drop of water. Then up rose the verbena, more wilted than ever, and more imperative in its demands. By this time my imagination was so rebellious that I longed to tear up and throw away the wretched little plant. But scorn it as I might, there was no denying my obligations as its creator. I was compelled by its very weakness and misery to supply what it required. I took the watering-pot to the cistern and drew barely enough water for the verbena; but this time, with dogged purpose, looking neither to right nor left, I thought myself back to the verbena, and watered it well. And now I was free. My tyrant had subsided into a commonplace little plant, sitting wet and happy in the midst of its tiny puddle. At this point I was aroused, or I should have continued my first dream and forgotten all about the verbena. As it was, I made haste to write it down, for it seemed to me that I had had a good illustration of how dreams are made. There first comes to the mind some impression-this may be a sensation from without-a sound, an odor, a ray of light, some position of the dreamer, or state of his system; or, perhaps, only an idea, an impression left on the mind by the waking thoughts, or drifted up from the great stream of memories and associations that flows ever beneath our consciousness. Given this first impression, the mind of the dreamer seems forced by some logical necessity to account for it. The impression takes on a form-such as the verbena -which calls for some course of action,

we

and the action is dramatized in a dream. Sometimes, as in the case given, the problem is simple and is solved at once. Sometimes it is complex-the mind cannot, except after repeated trials, make anything of the first impression; and then have those strange dreams, where circumstances that puzzled the dreamer are at last fully explained. Of course the commonest dream is that where no one impression is strong enough to control and give unity, and where the thoughts wander hither and thither disconnectedly.

My half-conscious state during this dream-making is like some stages in hypnotism and in insanity, where the patient is influenced by appearances that he knows to be false. I went, in imagination, through the actions that would have been actually performed by hypnotic or insane patients, on the same suggestion. They, too, often know they are dreaming, but are under the dominion of the dream idea, and must act in accordance with it.

WHO has not, as a child, longed to take advantage of his dreams in some way-to do desperate deeds-even to kill himself, just to see how it feels? But who was ever able to do anything of the sort, even when surest that he was dreaming?

The nearest I have come to carrying out my wishes in this respect was in a recent dream. I thought I stood among a crowd of people, and as I knew I was dreaming it occurred to me that here was a good chance to make some experiments. So I walked up to a negro woman, and, flourishing a heavy stick over her head, "Let ine crack your head," I said. only a dream."

"This is

The woman objected and fled from me, and so did all the others whom I offered to smite. Then a man came and took away my stick and brandished it at me, crying:

"If you are dreaming, let me crack your head."

But my spirit of scientific inquiry was not strong enough for this. I covered my head and ran away, in spite of my certainty that it was all a dream. When I awoke I was sorry I had not submitted my head to the blow. But that, of course, was impos

sible. Though we have been deceived by dreams from our infancy the next one finds us as credulous as ever. We laugh and admire and tremble now, just as we did in our childhood.

Of all dream deceptions dream poetry has, perhaps, the least resemblance to what it pretends to be. Several years ago samples of it were given in this Magazine,* and most of these were mere nonsense jingles, though to the dreamer they had seemed rarely beautiful. There was, at the same time, a defence of the dream poet. It was shown that he is subject to aphasia — or, rather, heterophasia — and so, while his ideas are often poetical, he can rarely mate words to his meaning. But since then a much graver charge has been made against him-one which his friends will find it hard to answer.

A young lady, after talking about dream composition, went to sleep and dreamed some verses. She got up immediately and recorded them, and the next morning she found that they were genuine poetry. She recited them to her friends, and the most critical of them were forced to admit that here, at last, was a really beautiful dream poem. But, alas! not long afterward she found her poem in print. I have forgotten where it was whether among the works of Tennyson or Browning, Keats or Shelley-but there it was, word for word, as the dream poet had drawn it-from her memory. He was proved to be a plagiarist, caught redhanded! And, as if this proof were not sufficient, a second one came soon afterward.

Another lady dreamed this verse:

I have eaten your bread and salt,

I have drunk your water and wine;
The hen that lived in the Argyle yard
Was bothered in her mind,

As to whether she'd carry her watch before,
Or carry her watch behind.

The first two lines are Rudyard Kipling's; the second two from some humorous verses written by the lady's uncle; so only the last two lines of this ingenious patchwork are the dream poet's own.

What can we say for the accused? That he thought they were his own? Or that he never actually claimed them?

* SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE for May, 1891. "Dream Poetry," by Mrs. Bessie A. Ficklen.

Neither plea would help him. We can only insist that such instances as the above are rare, and point to his original works as a proof of what he can do when he will. For instance, who else than he could have conceived the following verse: At first they fought with tooth and tongue, But when it came to blows

The man who had the strongest lung

Blew off the other's nose.

This was dreamed by a very learned and brilliant professor, whose one weakness, I may add, is punning. And who else ever had the human kindness to pay such a tribute as this next to so long-suffering a class? It is the poet who speaks, though he speaks in prose:

Every peddler and book agent is a reformer, an apostle, who says, "Improve your way of life!"

Most of our scraps of dream composition were caught between sleeping and waking; but we have also several specimens that came in that dozey state between waking and sleeping. These, like the verbena, were suddenly projected into consciousness, ready made and à propos of nothing, when the dreamer believed she was still awake and busy with other thoughts. First there is this verse-evidently an attempt to express the interdependence of all things:

"Mark you yon clot of earth," he said. "Change now the spot on which 'tis laid." And the earth quivered through to her innermost rock, Every atom of universe felt the shock!

The last two are in prose, and were dreamed by a person who is not conscious of ever having tried to make an aphorism. She declares that they come from an entirely different order of mind than her

own:

Genius standing on the outermost verge of reason's acquired ground is ever throwing out dykes into the sea of the unknown, and capturing from it new territory. And then, out of the depths of sub-consciousness, came this advice to writers:

A sentence may be long from enumeration, never from evolution. It is easier to mount by steps than on an inclined plane.

THERE is a good old saw about judging a man by the company he keeps, and as saws go it is pretty sound doctrine. Judge a man if you will by his companions, taking due notice as to how far he gives

himself up to them, and how much they mean to him; for of course there are men and men, and some men catch the tone of their associates and others give tone to them. Books are companions to many of us, men and women, but if you undertake to judge us by the books we read you will have occasion to use your best discretion. ́ People take their books so differently. Some of us do not exercise our minds

enough in our daily toil, and we like when we read to read books substantial enough to sharpen our faculties. Others of us come home with tired wits and want easy books that will rest and amuse us. Two people may read the same novel with equal pleasure, yet if one reads it after breakfast and the other after dinner, the fact that it amused them both does not tell the same story about the quality of their minds. If the book which you read when you are tired is strong enough food for my mind when its energies are fresh, it must mean that your mind and my mind lack a good deal of being mates.

And besides, there are people to whom it comes natural to read, and there are others, even in these days of newspapers and schools, to whom reading comes hard. I have seen, as most of us have, so many thoroughly worthless persons who were great readers, that when I meet a thoroughly worthy and intelligent person who doesn't read, it fills me with admiration and respect. I do meet such persons now and then. They are apt to be quick and accurate observers, good talkers, people of action. Of course they do read a little something every day, the newspaper if nothing more, but reading is not a necessity to them. They don't count on it as an amusement or depend upon it as an exercise of the mind. To the habitual reader, reading becomes as necessary as alcohol to the dram-drinker. It doesn't seem to make any violent amount of difference what he reads, but he must sit in a chair a certain length of time every day and rest his eyes and his mind on a printed page. You can no more judge such a person by the book-company he keeps than you can judge a lunatic by the qualities of his keepers. His reading is habit. It never turns to energy; never influences action. He sleeps better after it; that is all.