Across the Plains, with Other Memories and EssaysStevenson, Robert Louis
General
Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Essays; Monterey (Calif.) -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
And then, while he was yet a student, there came to him a dream-adventure
which he has no anxiety to repeat; he began, that is to say, to dream in
sequence and thus to lead a double life—one of the day, one of the
night—one that he had every reason to believe was the true one, another
that he had no means of proving to be false. I should have said he
studied, or was by way of studying, at Edinburgh College, which (it may
be supposed) was how I came to know him. Well, in his dream-life, he
passed a long day in the surgical theatre, his heart in his mouth, his
teeth on edge, seeing monstrous malformations and the abhorred dexterity
of surgeons. In a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he came forth into the
South Bridge, turned up the High Street, and entered the door of a tall
_land_, at the top of which he supposed himself to lodge. All night
long, in his wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after stair in
endless series, and at every second flight a flaring lamp with a
reflector. All night long, he brushed by single persons passing
downward—beggarly women of the street, great, weary, muddy labourers,
poor scarecrows of men, pale parodies of women—but all drowsy and weary
like himself, and all single, and all brushing against him as they
passed. In the end, out of a northern window, he would see day beginning
to whiten over the Firth, give up the ascent, turn to descend, and in a
breath be back again upon the streets, in his wet clothes, in the wet,
haggard dawn, trudging to another day of monstrosities and operations.
Time went quicker in the life of dreams, some seven hours (as near as he
can guess) to one; and it went, besides, more intensely, so that the
gloom of these fancied experiences clouded the day, and he had not shaken
off their shadow ere it was time to lie down and to renew them. I cannot
tell how long it was that he endured this discipline; but it was long
enough to leave a great black blot upon his memory, long enough to send
him, trembling for his reason, to the doors of a certain doctor;
whereupon with a simple draught he was restored to the common lot of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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