This is the whole dream, or, at all events, all that I can remember. It
appears to me not only obscure and meaningless, but more especially odd.
Mrs. E. L. is a person with whom I am scarcely on visiting terms, nor to
my knowledge have I ever desired any more cordial relationship. I have
not seen her for a long time, and do not think there was any mention of
her recently. No emotion whatever accompanied the dream process.
Reflecting upon this dream does not make it a bit clearer to my mind. I
will now, however, present the ideas, without premeditation and without
criticism, which introspection yielded. I soon notice that it is an
advantage to break up the dream into its elements, and to search out the
ideas which link themselves to each fragment.
_Company; at table or table d’hôte._ The recollection of the slight
event with which the evening of yesterday ended is at once called up. I
left a small party in the company of a friend, who offered to drive me
home in his cab. “I prefer a taxi,” he said; “that gives one such a
pleasant occupation; there is always something to look at.” When we were
in the cab, and the cab-driver turned the disc so that the first sixty
hellers were visible, I continued the jest. “We have hardly got in and
we already owe sixty hellers. The taxi always reminds me of the table
d’hôte. It makes me avaricious and selfish by continuously reminding me
of my debt. It seems to me to mount up too quickly, and I am always
afraid that I shall be at a disadvantage, just as I cannot resist at
table d’hôte the comical fear that I am getting too little, that I must
look after myself.” In far-fetched connection with this I quote:
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go.”
Another idea about the table d’hôte. A few weeks ago I was very cross
with my dear wife at the dinner-table at a Tyrolese health resort,
because she was not sufficiently reserved with some neighbours with whom
I wished to have absolutely nothing to do. I begged her to occupy
herself rather with me than with the strangers. That is just as if I had
_been at a disadvantage at the table d’hôte_. The contrast between the
behaviour of my wife at that table and that of Mrs. E. L. in the dream
now strikes me: “_Addresses herself entirely to me._”
Further, I now notice that the dream is the reproduction of a little
scene which transpired between my wife and myself when I was secretly
courting her. The caressing under cover of the tablecloth was an answer
to a wooer’s passionate letter. In the dream, however, my wife is
replaced by the unfamiliar E. L.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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