THE BEST STORY.

Evening Post, Volume XLVI, Issue 19, 22 July 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BEST STORY.

[ V/s-WBf6 diacuafiing the wonderI fully short time in which a very long dream may be dreamed by a dreamer ■ whose dreamery is in good order and | geared up for fast work. , The city editor had worked off the . ancient Egyptian chestnut of the , philosopher who accidentally tipped 1 over a small water- bottle just as he 1 dropped asleep, and, after dreaming [ a forty-eight column nonpareil dream , i awoke to find the water not yet all > run out. '. I had told my famous story of the t man who was overcome by slumber . just as the clock was striking mid- ) night, dreaming a long, complicated - dream that it took him half of the | next day to tell to his junior clerk, who couldn't get away, and awoke r to hear the last three of the twelve '■ strokes. Cooper had sat silently listening ; j but now he braced up manfully, and r with a look of desperate resolve he 9 began — 9 "I had an even more wonderful T { experience than those you have been r relating, gentlemen, myself. I had 3 been out interviewing strikers, and , when I got into the office, and H handed in my last bit of copy, I was dead beat out. I came over here to my corner aud dropped into my chair, and was asleep before I struck the cushion. I straightway began to dream. I lived a whole lifetime, 8 from a little babe to old age. Every step of my education, every difficult a lesson, was reviewed in detail, even to intricate geometrical problems. X fell in love, courted and married three different girls, committed a murder, lived through every incident of a long trial, and served a spntenoe of twenty years, every day j of which was diatirct and full of 1 minute incidents of prison life. j '* Sailed on a three years' voyage 3 around the world, and in the last 3 month of the last year was wrecked j on a desert island ; captured by s cannibals ; nearly crushed by a boa- } constrictor ; rescued by the Russians, ouly to be sentenced to Sibera, from , which I escaped and wandered ! through the Arctic regions formonths. i Did splendid work as reporter on f a morning newspaper for several j years, and &c city editor was just I about to make me his assistant, when I suddenly^ awoke. Some one had , placed a pin in that chair, and I had , dreamed that entire dream between I the moment I had started to sit down [ and when I struck that pin." . And the city editor and I arose, [ put on our coats in beaten silence, , and went home to bed. — Harper's L Magazine.