so agreeable was suddenly broken off.
Also I was doubtful as to what exact
period of my life the interesting episode
belonged. However, as I thought on, and
more perfectly recovered the condition of
wakefulness, it turned out that no such
person as the lady of the Albany Road had
ever existed. Now the question is, whether
she was the figure in a dream of several
yeaf's ago, or whether, in a state of "doze,"
I dreamed a memory of something that
had never been present even to my
imagination. The total want of connexion
between the conflict with the bullocks and
the pacific idyll, by which it was
immediately followed, is worthy of observation.

The expedient of throwing myself on my
face to escape from impending horrors,
sometimes fails in an extraordinary
manner. By sheer force of will I indeed
destroy the vision, and find myself apparently
awake in my bed. But the chamber, though
exactly like that which I actually occupy, is
another dream, from which I must awake
anew, and which is probably peopled with
forms more terrible than those which I have
annihilated, because they more closely
approach reality. Once I experienced a
singular pause on the boundary line which
parts the visionary from the actual. I
dreamed that I was present at a ball, where
the most conspicuous figure was a lady,
dressed in white satin. When I woke, I
was in my veritable room; but though the
other figures had vanished, the lady in
white was standing on the floor, all the
rest of the vision having melted around
her. She broke into little pieces, like those
of a dissected puzzle, each of which vanished
by itself. This case, of the fragment of a
dream remaining, when all the rest was
gone, I never experienced before or since.

There are circumstances, generally of a
painful kind, under which certain objects
so firmly take possession of the mind, that
even in sound sleep they unwillingly relax
their hold, and are ready to appear at the
first wakeful moment, when they put on a
terrible freshness. Such objects are, of
course, prominent in our dreams; it seems
as if that anxiety for the future, which has
occupied us during the day, also lasts
through the night. This state of mind,
however, is fortunately exceptional, and
under ordinary circumstances, I can say
for myself, that my dreams have nothing
whatever to do with the events of the
preceding day. This experience directly
opposes the theory that the objects of our
thoughts before we fall asleep form the
substance of our nightly vision, or rather
confines the application of this theory to
an abnormal state of things. When my
mind is tolerably at ease, my dreams
generally refer to a period of my life which has
passed away long ago, and has left scarcely
a trace behind it, whereas of the persons
with whom I converse almost daily, and
in whom I take a serious interest, I rarely
dream at all. During the period in question,
I was studying, or pretending to
study, the law in a solicitor's office; but
I never seriously followed the profession,
and at last I gave it up altogether. It
was a period of seven years, but though I
had many associates and was on good terms
with all my fellows, there is not one among
them with whom I am intimate now. As
for my friends of the present, when I tell
them that I was once a lawyer, they smile
with bland incredulity, so different is the
capacity in which I have long been known.
Yet, strange to say, to this unfruitful,
unprofitable period, unmarked as it was by a
single stirring incident, do I commonly
recur in my dreams, when my mind is not
troubled. Again I am in that old-fashioned
City office, feeling that it is my duty to be
there, and somewhat uneasy lest I may be
reprimanded for coming late. The person
who may possibly reprimand is the senior
partner, who has ceased to take a very
active share in the business, and whose
energies are commonly wasted in a vain
endeavour to bring us youngsters to
something like a sense of discipline. He is a
native of Yorkshire, and though he has
been from his youth a resident in the Great
City, he speaks with a provincial bluffness
which awes young cockneys, though they
know that at bottom he is thoroughly
good-humoured, and though they not
unfrequently smile at the slips in grammar
of which he is occasionally guilty, and
which have no connexion with the dialect
of his country. Of this good old gentleman,
dead long ago, and distinguished even
from the men of his time by his unwieldy
figure, his ill-fitting black coat, and his
drab breeches, continued by gaiters, I
never think by any chance during my
wakeful hours, and I only think of him at
the present moment because I am penning
these confessions. And yet, as I have said,
he is one of the most familiar figures in
my dreams.

While he is before my mind, I will record
a fact connected with him, which has no
reference to my subject, but which is too
curious to be passed over. One of our