_June_ 1891.
I had a most extraordinary dream last night. The whole of Calcutta seemed
enveloped in some awful mystery, the houses being only dimly visible
through a dense, dark mist, within the veil of which there were strange
doings.
I was going along Park Street in a hackney carriage, and as I passed St.
Xavier's College I found it had started growing rapidly and was fast
getting impossibly high within its enveloping haze. Then it was borne in
on me that a band of magicians had come to Calcutta who, if they were paid
for it, could bring about many such wonders.
When I arrived at our Jorasanko house, I found these magicians had turned
up there too. They were ugly-looking, of a Mongolian type, with scanty
moustaches and a few long hairs sticking out of their chins. They could
make men grow. Some of the girls wanted to be made taller, and the
magician sprinkled some powder over their heads and they promptly shot up.
To every one I met I kept repeating: "This is most extraordinary,--just
like a dream!"
Then some one proposed that our house should be made to grow. The
magicians agreed, and as a preliminary began to take down some portions.
The dismantling over, they demanded money, or else they would not go on.
The cashier strongly objected. How could payment be made before the work
was completed? At this the magicians got wild and twisted up the building
most fearsomely, so that men and brickwork got mixed together, bodies
inside walls and only head and shoulders showing.
It had altogether the look of a thoroughly devilish business, as I told my
eldest brother. "You see," said I, "the kind of thing it is. We had better
call upon God to help us!" But try as I might to anathematise them in the
name of God, my heart felt like breaking and no words would come. Then I
awoke.
A curious dream, was it not? Calcutta in the hands of Satan and growing
diabolically, within the darkness of an unholy mist!