Something Like a Dreamer.

Otago Witness, Issue 2370, 3 August 1899, Page 61

Something Like a Dreamer.

The sub-editor had worked off t!,e Ees'ptian chsefcnut of the philosopher who accidentally lipped over a small water bottle j'ist as he droppe-l acleep, and after dieair-'ing- a 4Pcoluitm dream, v/oke to find the w»-:er .not yet all run out. I had told my famous slory of {.ho man who was overcome by slumber just aa the clock was striking midnight, dreamt a long, complicated dream that took him half of next day to tell to his junior clerk, who couldn't get away, and awoke to hear the last three of the 12 strokes. Cooper bad sat silently listening; but now he l"i-i."t>d himself up manfulfy, and, with v look of desperate resolve, he began: " I had an even more wonderful experience thaw rhoFn you have beer, relating, gentlemen, myself. I had beeu out interviewing strikers, and -nheu I got into the office, and handed iv my last bit of r-opy, I was dead beat out. I cairio over here in my corner, and dropped into this chair, and was asleep before I struck the ciuliion. " £ straightway began to dream. T lived a whole. Mfotime from a little babe to old age. Every step of my education, eery difficult lesson, was reviewed in detail, pven to intricate geometrical problems. f fell in love, courted and married three different (.h-h, committed a murder, lived through every incident of a long trial, and served a sontt/nca of 20 years, every day of wMch wus distinct and full of niinute irto'dentf of prison life. '"I sailed on a tliroa years' royage round the world, and in the last month of the last year was wrecked ou a desert island, captured by cannibals, nearly crushed by a boa-con-strictor, reacued by the Russians, ouiy'lo be sentenced to Siberia, from which I reaped and waodered through the Arctic region? for fiKT.tBP .: did spfondid work as a loporter on a n-iormnjf uewapaper for sevsrai year?, and khe editor was jusfc going lo make me his :t?sktant- when I suddenly awoke. Someone had placed a pin in that chair, and 1 dreamed that entire tu'sain between the moment when I siarteu to sit down and when I struck thot pin." And th-? sab-editor and I arose, put on our coats in- beaten silence, and went home to bed.