The Book of Dreams and Ghosts | Page 7

the cheque curled round an area railing not far from his own door. He
woke, got up, dressed, walked down the street and found his cheque in
the place he had dreamed of. In his opinion he had noticed it fall from
his pocket as he walked to the letter-box, without consciously
remarking it, and his deeper memory awoke in slumber. {11a}
THE DUCKS' EGGS
A little girl of the author's family kept ducks and was anxious to sell the
eggs to her mother. But the eggs could not be found by eager search.
On going to bed she said, "Perhaps I shall dream of them". Next

morning she exclaimed, "I did dream of them, they are in a place
between grey rock, broom, and mallow; that must be 'The Poney's
Field'!" And there the eggs were found. {11b}
THE LOST KEY
Lady X., after walking in a wood near her house in Ireland, found that
she had lost an important key. She dreamed that it was lying at the root
of a certain tree, where she found it next day, and her theory is the same
as that of Mr. A., the owner of the lost cheque. {11c}
As a rule dreams throw everything into a dramatic form. Some one
knocks at our door, and the dream bases a little drama on the noise; it
constructs an explanatory myth, a myth to account for the noise, which
is acted out in the theatre of the brain.
To take an instance, a disappointing one:--
THE LOST SECURITIES
A lady dreamed that she was sitting at a window, watching the end of
an autumn sunset. There came a knock at the front door and a
gentleman and lady were ushered in. The gentleman wore an old-
fashioned snuff-coloured suit, of the beginning of the century; he was,
in fact, an aged uncle, who, during the Napoleonic wars, had been one
of the English detenus in France. The lady was very beautiful and wore
something like a black Spanish mantilla. The pair carried with them a
curiously wrought steel box. Before conversation was begun, the maid
(still in the dream) brought in the lady's chocolate and the figures
vanished. When the maid withdrew, the figures reappeared standing by
the table. The box was now open, and the old gentleman drew forth
some yellow papers, written on in faded ink. These, he said, were lists
of securities, which had been in his possession, when he went abroad in
18--, and in France became engaged to his beautiful companion.
"The securities," he said, "are now in the strong box of Messrs. ---;"
another rap at the door, and the actual maid entered with real hot water.
It was time to get up. The whole dream had its origin in the first rap,

heard by the dreamer and dramatised into the arrival of visitors.
Probably it did not last for more than two or three seconds of real time.
The maid's second knock just prevented the revelation of the name of
"Messrs. ---," who, like the lady in the mantilla, were probably
non-existent people. {13}
Thus dream dramatises on the impulse of some faint, hardly perceived
real sensation. And thus either mere empty fancies (as in the case of the
lost securities) or actual knowledge which we may have once possessed
but have totally forgotten, or conclusions which have passed through
our brains as unheeded guesses, may in a dream be, as it were,
"revealed" through the lips of a character in the brain's theatre-- that
character may, in fact, be alive, or dead, or merely fantastical. A very
good case is given with this explanation (lost knowledge revived in a
dramatic dream about a dead man) by Sir Walter Scott in a note to The
Antiquary. Familiar as the story is it may be offered here, for a reason
which will presently be obvious.
THE ARREARS OF TEIND
"Mr. Rutherford, of Bowland, a gentleman of landed property in the
Vale of Gala, was prosecuted for a very considerable sum, the
accumulated arrears of teind (or tithe) for which he was said to be
indebted to a noble family, the titulars (lay impropriators of the tithes).
Mr. Rutherford was strongly impressed with the belief that his father
had, by a form of process peculiar to the law of Scotland, purchased
these teinds from the titular, and, therefore, that the present prosecution
was groundless. But, after an industrious search among his father's
papers, an investigation among the public records and a careful inquiry
among all persons who had transacted law business for his father, no
evidence could be recovered to support his defence. The period was
now near at hand, when he conceived the loss of his law-suit to be
inevitable; and he had formed the determination to