Everybody is familiar with the kind of story that depends for its effect upon a surprising "point" that comes at the end, unanticipated by the hearer and amusing to him largely in proportion as it is unexpected. Stories of this kind are frequently elaborate; a great deal of detail is introduced, as artfully as possible, every bit of which must tantalizingly lead towards the point that is coming, but no word of which must really divulge that point until the moment when the _raconteur_ is ready to "spring" it, as we say, with a sudden burst. Obviously the listener must not guess the point before that moment, or the story will fall flat, and just as obviously the narrator must have it in mind continually, or he could not tell the story. He could hardly recount a tale of this variety unless he knew how it was "coming out." Especially if it were considerably involved, he could scarcely pick his way through it step by step towards an end that he did not himself foresee, arranging in their places dozens of details leading he knew not where, and then come nicely to a climax that he himself did not anticipate--a climax which, in this hardly conceivable case, would obviously surprise him as much as it could his listener. The waking mind, unless by the rarest of accidents, cannot work in such a fashion. And my puzzle is, how can the dreaming mind do so? For I, at least, do dream occasionally in just this manner. I make up a story of this species in my dream, and usually a complicated story. In it I proceed from point to point without having any notion of my destination; I string together a small host of details, though I remain ignorant of their meaning and unsuspicious of any climax that is coming later to explain them; and when finally I reach that climax, and see the joke that I have plotted so unwittingly, I am myself ingenuously amused by it. And how I manage to do this is my enigma. For obviously I either do foresee the point of the story or I do not. If I do, how can I be surprised when it arrives? If I do not, how can I prepare for it so carefully? Either case supposes a manner of mentation hardly comprehensible.