In striking the iron track below, the every-day set which the Rev. Mr.
Hallelujah had in use became loosened, and smiled across the road-bed and
right of way at the bran fired new array of incisors, cuspids, bi-cuspids
and molars that flew out of the valise. Mr. Hallelujah got up and tried to
look merry, but he could not smile without his teeth. The back seams of
his Newmarket coat were more successful, however.
Mr. Hallelujah's wardrobe and a small boy were the only objects that dared
to smile.
Somnambulism and Crime.
A recent article in the London _Post_ on the subject of somnambulism,
calls to my mind several little incidents with somnambulistic tendencies
in my own experience.
This subject has, indeed, attracted my attention for some years, and it
has afforded me great pleasure to investigate it carefully.
Regarding the causes of dreams and somnambulism, there are many theories,
all of which are more or less untenable. My own idea, given, of course, in
a plain, crude way, is that thoughts originate on the inside of the brain
and then go at once to the surface, where they have their photographs
taken, with the understanding that the negatives are to be preserved. In
this way the thought may afterward be duplicated back to the thinker in
the form of a dream, and, if the impulse be strong enough, muscular action
and somnambulism may result.
On the banks of Bitter Creek, some years ago, lived an open-mouthed man,
who had risen from affluence by his unaided effort until he was entirely
free from any incumbrance in the way of property. His mind dwelt on this
matter a great deal during the day. Thoughts of manual labor flitted
through his mind, but were cast aside as impracticable. Then other means
of acquiring property suggested themselves. These thoughts were
photographed on the delicate negative of the brain, where it is a rule to
preserve all negatives. At night these thoughts were reversed within the
think resort, if I may be allowed that term, and muscular action resulted.
Yielding at last to the great desire for possessions and property the
somnambulist groped his way to the corral of a total stranger, and
selecting a choice mule with great dewy eyes and real camel's hair tail,
he fled. On and on he pressed, toward the dark, uncertain west, till at
last rosy morn clomb the low, outlying hills and gilded the gray outlines
of the sage-brush. The coyote slunk back to his home, but the somnambulist
did not.
He awoke as day dawned, and, when he found himself astride the mule of
another, a slight shudder passed the entire length of his frame. He then
fully realized that he had made his debut as a somnambulist. He seemed to
think that he who starts out to be a somnambulist should never turn back.
So he pressed on, while the red sun stepped out into the awful quiet of
the dusty waste and gradually moved up into the sky, and slowly added
another day to those already filed away in the dark maw of ages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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