Waking: Dreams

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 4 February 1916, Page 3

Waking: Dreams

It is more than likely that the great majority of dreams belong to the few moments when we are falling off to sleep and the equally brief time we take to wake up.

But what about the long and complicated dreams we dream in which all kinds of things happen, and all manner of people visit us ?

Well, there is reason to think that all these things pass through the brain like a film tragedy which ought to take an hour to tell, being rushed off in two minutes at lightning speed. In fact, nothing is more fully established than the fact that an apparently long dream can unfold itself in an infinitesimal space of time. Alfred Maury relates how he had a long and vivid dream of the Reign of Terror in France, which included his trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal and his execution. He actually felt the guillotine fall! Yet that dream from beginning to end was actually caused by the fall of a curtain rod, which struck him on the neck and woke him up. The. whole lengthy dream lasted really a couple of seconds.

A well-known writer was sitting up late writing something he much wished to finish. Suddenly someone came into the room and announced that he was called to go to Manchester. He went out and packed his bag, and went to the northern city, where he stayed several days and saw innumerable people. He returned in due course and transacted a lot of business in town, and actually contracted for and started a new book. Yet when he woke with a start and found it was all a dream, the ink of the last word lie had written was as fresh and needed the blotting paper as much as if it had only just been written. He could not have dozed longer than ten seconds !