Indefinite expansion of time—or, rather, a total ignoring of the limitations of time—is another peculiarity in dreaming. It has been demonstrated that a man can dream in detail the events of years, and consume in the act of dreaming only a small fraction of one minute. “I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one night,” says De Quincy, the prince of dreamers: “nay, I sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time.” Dr. Macnish, from whose delightful essays several of these illustrations have been taken, within an hour dreamed that he made a voyage, remained some days in Calcutta, returned home, then took ship for Egypt, visited the cataracts of the Nile, Cairo, and the Pyramids; “and, to crown the whole, had the honor of an interview with Mehemet Ali, Cleopatra, and Alexander the Great!” A gentleman dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier, performed many military duties, deserted, been apprehended, carried back, tried, condemned to be shot, and at last led out for execution. His eyes were blindfolded; after an interval of awful agony he heard the rattle of the fatal musketry, and awoke—to find that “a noise in the adjoining room had at the same moment produced the dream and awakened him.” We have, perhaps, all, though in less degree, had similar experience of the rapidity of thought in dreaming. There is hardly any limitation to the fancy of the dreamer; he may even lose his identity, and for the nonce personate Cæsar, or Cromwell, or the King of the Cannibal Islands. It is said, however, that no man or woman ever dreamed that he or she belonged to the other sex; although the strange notion that the dreamer is a fish, or beast, or bird, is not infrequent. Usually, however, “we are somewhat more than ourselves in our dreams.” The tired school girl cries herself to sleep over some difficult arithmetical task, dreams, perhaps, that her teacher assists her, and wakens with the correct “answer” in her mind. So Condorcet successfully pursued his most intricate calculations in his dreams; and Benjamin Franklin has acknowledged his indebtedness to his midnight visions for the solution of many grave political problems which had hopelessly taxed his reason during his waking hours. An austere philosopher, who ordinarily seemed to be destitute of risibility, tells us that in one dream he could compose a whole comedy, witness its performance, relish its jests, and laugh himself awake.