In reality, this was not so much a joke for me at the time, as I tried to
give the impression that it was, and I longed for the very thing of which we
joked. The fact that I was out on the street on a cold winter night in this
dream symbolized being "out in the cold world," as we had used the term
then.
I now took up the letters "W. H." again, and the words "White Horse" came in
response to the stimulus. With little hesitation I placed this as connected
with the Knights of the White Horse of whom Tennyson writes in his poems of
"King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table." I got very little out of this,
but still the White Horse was a band of men who were unrestrained in their
desires and bore about the same relation to King Arthur's Knights that
Harding did to me. However, the associations did not stop here but went on,
giving what at first seemed to be a meaningless list of words. "W. H." first
called up the words, "Wish Harding"; next, "Will Harding"; next, "With
Harding"; and last, "Walk Harding." In a minute it flashed on me what this
all meant. "I WISH to do as Harding is doing, to WALK the way he is WITH
him and I WILL." To walk up Queen Street meant, then, to follow his
example, as he at one time paid some attention to this Miss Agnes Queen.
Perhaps the reason why her name was selected instead of some others was
because his relations to her had been very slight and formal, and thus the
idea was easier for the censor to let into sleeping consciousness than it
would have been if some other names had been taken. "W. H.," then,
symbolized the four expressions that arose in the analysis.
The meaning of "King Street" came last of anything in the dream, but I will
give it now. I did not seem to be able to get anywhere on this for some
time, and the idea kept presenting itself that it symbolized that I was king
of the situation which seemed innocent enough; but at last there came an
association with Nero as portrayed in "Quo Vadis." I then remembered how I
read this book while in the adolescent stage, and how a cousin made remarks,
very sensuous in their nature, about parts of it. I then got a vision of
the book, "Mad Majesties," which I saw on the library table not long since.
Next came a memory of the French kings as portrayed in the works of Dumas.
At this point, I realized that the idea suggested by the word king is very
often, though not always, an idea or image of a very loose person as far as
his social life is concerned. Thus to walk Queen Street or follow the
example of Harding finds a parallel in walking King Street or following the
example of a king.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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