Once, on a very windy night, and when, perhaps, suffering a trifling
disturbance of health--for there was slight pleurodynic pain the next
morning--I dreamed I was quietly at home with friends, when suddenly
the sky became illuminated. We found that this was due to steady and
continuous lightning, a state of things which remained throughout the
dream, the sky presenting the appearance of a cracked and crushed sheet
of melting ice.[64] By and by, fragments of buildings and similar debris
were whirled past in the air, and I caught sight of a woman driven above
me by her skirts. We now realised the imminent approach of a terrific
cyclone which, at any moment, might carry the house and ourselves away. I
remembered no more.
Yet another dream may be mentioned as likewise directly due to a violent
storm and the rattling of a window near my bed. The latter sound evidently
recalled to sleeping consciousness the sound of the rattling window of
a railway train, and I dreamed that I was travelling to Berlin with a
medical friend. There were the accompaniments, not unfamiliar in dreams,
of rushing along interminable platforms, and up and down endless stairs,
finding myself in a carriage of the wrong class, with, in consequence,
more wandering along corridors, and finally finding that my friend had
been left behind. The character of the dream may have been influenced by
slight indigestion. In this dream, unlike those already recorded as due to
external stimuli, the elements of the dream were not the pure invention
of dreaming imagination, but compacted entirely of ideas that had been
recently familiar.
The following dream was due to an auditory stimulus of different
character. I dreamed that I was listening to a performance of Haydn's
_Creation_, the orchestral part of the performance seeming to consist
chiefly of the very realistic representation of the song of birds, though
I could not identify the note of any particular bird. Then followed solos
by male singers, whom I saw, especially one who attracted my attention
by singing at the close in a scarcely audible voice. On awakening, the
source of the dream was not immediately obvious, but I soon realised that
it was the song of a canary in another room. I had never heard Haydn's
_Creation_, except in fragments, nor thought of it at any recent period;
its reputation as regards the realistic representation of natural sounds
had evidently caused it to be put forward by sleeping consciousness as
a plausible explanation of the sounds heard, and the visual centres had
accepted the theory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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