A DREAMER'S STORY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144196, 12 September 1913, Page 8

A DREAMER'S STORY.

LONG EVENTS THAT PASS IN A MOMENT. Dreams,, so often dismissed as meaningless things, are receiving a great deal of scientific attention just now. Members of the British Medico-psycho-logical Association have been discussing them, and they formed th« subject of an interesting meeting of the Congress of the British Medical Association at Brighton. In the course of the discussion at the Medico Psychological meeting, Sir Qcorgo fl. Savage, who has always been a dreamer himself, and no sooner closes his eyes than ho . passes into dreamland, gave some interesting data upon which ho bases the belief that dreams, even of an apparently prolonged character, occupy but the shortest space of time. “Dreams are almost always associated,” ho said, “with the moments of waking or falling asleep. They may be of the briefest time, yet may appear long. ... “I was onco benighted with a party when climbing without guides in Switzerland. Wo Were finally forced to stop in our descent by a precipice, and we got into secure but narrow places. The only change of position I could get was* by placing a foot on a rock opposite me, bnt always to -be-recalled to my position by my foot falling. SOUP AND A DREAM. “Once I fell asleep for a moment between placing my foot on the rock and the foot falling, and in this fraction of a second I dreamt that 1 had to go home, dress for dinner, and then drive to the house of my hostess, I arrived there to find that I was rather late. 1 took the hostess down to dinner, and was asked by thp butler if I would take Mulligatawny soup. “Tlio soup was the only recent traceable association with the dream. The night before, at our bivouac, one of the party produced some compressed soup, which turned out to bo Mulligatawny, a soup we thought unsuitable tor thirsty souls. TWO MINUTES. “On another occasion, returning from fishing, I threw myself in an armchair, and said to my companion, “I will sleep for five minutes before changing my clothesifor dinner.” 1 may say that I have the gift of voluntary sleep. ■ , . “This was at twenty-five minutes -past seven. At 7.27 I awoke, havUng had a long dream, in which 1 had had a serious difference concornirig a young relation having a butler at Oxford. . . “Thus, by the clock, m two minutes I decided to sleep, 1 slept and I dreamt:” 1 In a paner on “Dreams and their Significance” which Sir George read to one of tho branches of the Medico Psychological Association a little time ago, ho quoted the suggestion of Hutchinson that there might bo reversions to ancestral habits in dreams, and that our floating dreams might really be memories of an arboreal existence of simian ancestors.