It is very strange, in the matter of dreadful dreams, how the body of
the terror is, in the course of often dreaming, reduced to a mere
convention. For a long time I was tormented with a nightmare of
burglars, and at first I used to dramatize the whole affair in detail,
from the time the burglars approached the house till they mounted the
stairs and the light of their dark-lanterns shone under the door into my
room. Now I have blue-penciled all that introductory detail; I have a
light shining in under my door at once; I know that it is my old
burglars; and I have the effect of nightmare without further ceremony.
There are other nightmares that still cost me a great deal of trouble in
their construction, as, for instance, the nightmare of clinging to the
face of a precipice or the eaves of a lofty building; I have to take as
much pains with the arrangement of these as if I were now dreaming them
for the first time and were hardly more than an apprentice in the
business.
Perhaps the most universal dream of all is that disgraceful dream of
appearing in public places and in society with very little or nothing
on. This dream spares neither age nor sex, I believe, and I daresay the
innocency of wordless infancy is abused by it and dotage pursued to the
tomb. I have not the least doubt Adam and Eve had it in Eden; though, up
to the moment the fig-leaf came in, it is difficult to imagine just what
plight they found themselves in that seemed improper; probably there was
some plight. The most amusing thing about this dream is the sort of
defensive process that goes on in the mind in search of
self-justification or explanation. Is there not some peculiar
circumstance or special condition in whose virtue it is wholly right and
proper for one to come to a fashionable assembly clad simply in a
towel, or to go about the street in nothing but a pair of kid gloves, or
of pajamas at the most? This, or something like it, the mind of the
dreamer struggles to establish, with a good deal of anxious appeal to
the bystanders and a final sense of the hopelessness of the cause.
One may easily laugh off this sort of dream in the morning, but there
are other shameful dreams whose inculpation projects itself far into the
day, and whose infamy often lingers about one till lunch-time. Everyone,
nearly, has had them, but it is not the kind of dream that anyone is
fond of telling: the gross vanity of the most besotted dream-teller
keeps that sort back. During the forenoon, at least, the victim goes
about with the dim question whether he is not really that kind of man
harassing him, and a sort of remote fear that he may be. I fancy that as
to his nature and as to his mind he is so, and that but for the supernal
criticism, but for his soul, he might be that kind of man in very act
and deed.
The dreams we sometimes have about other people are not without a
curious suggestion; and the superstitious (of those superstitious who
like to invent their own superstitions) might very well imagine that the
persons dreamed of had a witting complicity in their facts, as well as
the dreamer. This is a conjecture that must, of course, not be forced to
any conclusion. One must not go to one of these persons and ask, however
much one would like to ask: "Sir, have you no recollection of such and
such a thing, at such and such a time and place, which happened to us in
my dream?" Any such person would be fully justified in not answering the
question. It would be, of all interviewing, the most intolerable
species. Yet a singular interest, a curiosity not altogether
indefensible, will attach to these persons in the dreamer's mind, and he
will not be without the sense, ever after, that he and they have a
secret in common. This is dreadful, but the only thing that I can think
to do about it is to urge people to keep out of other people's dreams by
every means in their power.