ESSAY ON DREAMS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 34, 26 August 1893, Page 143

ESSAY ON DREAMS.

BY A PUBLIC SCHOOL BOY. Dreams are imaginative workings of the brain when a person is asleep. There is a writer who says, ‘ Tell me a man’s dreams and I will tell you what he is,’ but although this may be true in some instances it is not so in mine. I do not often dream of what I think and feel, but more of what I read. Of course lam only a boy, and things which I read have, probably, a more powerful effect on my mind than, upon the mind of a man, and perhaps this is the reason that I dream so seldom of my inmost thoughts and feelings. Dreams seem to the dreamer to occupy a considerable length of time, and even when he wakes lie thinks that it took him a considerable time to dream that which he has dreamed. But there is one case which came under my immediate notice, in which the person concerned is certain that he dreamed his dream in the period of time occupied by his opening his eyes when awaking. When he was fully awake he noticed a sunlight shadow upon the wall opposite to him, caused by the sun shining through a space between the window and the blind. The shadow was something in the shape of a man. He immediately seized upon this as the origin of his dream, which was as follows. He dreamt that a ghost of about the substance of tissue paper was following him wherever he went and that it was seeking his life. He was afraid that it would spring upon him from behind and thus secure an advantage, so that he always kept his face towards it as much as possible. He often tried to catch it, but it always eluded him. Day after day for about a week did this continue, but at last he got it in a corner and caught hold of it and after a severe struggle, killed it. Now the dreamer was certain that it was the shadow which had caused his dream, and that he dreamt it while opening his eyes, for he had been reading nothing about ghosts ami had not had the slightest thought of them. It shows how rapid thought is, and how quickly a dream passes when we consider that in the 20th part of a second he should dream so much and go through so many adventmes ; however mixed up and confused.

Master Willie (who has just been described by a visitor as ‘ Such an intelligent little fellow !’) : ‘ Papa, has the gen’lum brought my new boots?’ Papa (who doesn't see what is coming): ‘Boots, Willie? Why, what makes you ask?’ Master Willie : • ’Cause when he came 'fore, you said he was a snob ; and I asked Jane what a snob was, and she said a shoemaker.’ (Sensation.)