Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

some indication of the nature of Dan's sleeping fancies, began to feel very sleepy himself, and went to bed. In the morning, when they were both awake, Joshua asked what Dan had dreamt of.

'I can't remember,' said Dan, rubbing his eyes.

'I pressed your combativeness for a long time, Dan,' said Joshua; and I pressed it so hard that I was almost afraid you would hit out.'

'I didn't, did I ?'

'No; you were as still as a mouse.'

'I dreamt of something, though,' said Dan, considering. O, I remember; I dreamt of you, Jo; you were standing on a big ship, with a big telescope in your hand. You had no cap on, and your hair was all flying about.'

'Were there any sailors on the ship ?'

'A good many.'

'Did you quarrel with any of them?'

'I didn't dream of myself at all.'

'Did any of the sailors quarrel with me?'

There wasn't any quarrelling, Jo, that I can remember.'

'So you see,' said Joshua, ‘that it is all fudge.' 'I don't see that at all. Now I think of it, it

isn't likely that I should dream of quarrelling with any one or fighting with any one when I was dreaming of you, Jo.'

'Or perhaps you haven't any combativeness, Dan.'

[ocr errors]

Perhaps I haven't. It wouldn't be of much use to me if I had, for I shouldn't know how to fight.'

'Or perhaps your combativeness is so small that it won't act,' said Joshua sportively.

'Don't joke about it, Jo,' said Dan. 'You don't know how serious I am, and how disappointed I feel at its being a failure. Will you try it again to-night?'

Joshua, seeing that Dan was very much in earnest, readily promised; and the experiment was repeated that night, with the same result. After that the subject dropped for a time.

But if Dan's organ of adhesiveness-which, phrenologically, means affection, friendship, attachment was large, it was scarcely more powerful than his organ of concentrativeness. His love for Joshua was perfect. He knew that Joshua's choice of a pursuit would separate him from his friend. When he said to Joshua, 'I shall live in you, Jo,' the words conveyed the expression of no

light feeling, but of a deep earnest longing and desire to be always with his friend-to be always with him, although oceans divided them. If no misfortune had befallen him, if his limbs had been sound and his body strong, Dan would have been intellectually superior to boys in the same station of life as himself. Debarred as he was from their amusements, their anxieties, and their general ways of life, he was thrown, as it were, upon his intellect for consolation. It brought him, by the blessing of God, such consolation that his misfortune might have been construed into a thing to be coveted. There is good in everything.

All Dan's sympathies were with Joshua. Dan admired him for his determination, for his desire to be better than his fellows. It was Dan who first declared that Joshua was to be a hero; and Joshua accepted Dan's dictum with complacency. It threw a halo of romance around his determination not to be a wood-turner and not to do as his father had done before him. The reader, from these remarks, or the incidents that follow, may now or presently understand why the wildlyvague essay on the Philosophy of Dreams, or the Triumph of Mind over Matter, took Dan's mind prisoner and so infatuated him.

[ocr errors]

Referring to the book again, after the failure of the experiments upon his organ of combativeness, Dan found a few simple directions by which the reader could test, in a minor degree, the power of the mind over the sleeping body. One of the most simple was this: A person, before he goes to sleep, must resolutely make up his mind to wake at a certain hour in the morning. He must say to himself, 'I want to wake at five o'clock at five o'clock-at five o'clock; I will wake at five o'clock-I will-I will-I will!' and continue to repeat the words and the determination over and over again until he fell asleep, with the resolve firmly fixed in his mind. If you do this, said the writer, you will awake at five o'clock. Dan tried this experiment the same night-and failed. He repeated it the following night, and the night following that, with the same result. His sleep was disturbed, but that was all. But on the fourth night matters were different. o'clock was the hour Dan fixed upon, and nothing was more certain than that on the fourth night Dan woke up at the precise moment. There were two churches in the immediate neighbourhood, and, as he woke, Dan heard the first church-bell toll the hour. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. G

VOL. I.

Five

Each stroke of the bell was followed by a dismal hum of woful tribulation. Then the other church-bell struck the hour, and each stroke of that was followed by a cheerful ring, bright and crisp and clear. Dan smiled and hugged himself, and went to sleep again, cherishing wild hopes which he dared not confess even to himself. He tried the experiment on the following night, fixing on a different time, half-past three. Undaunted by that and many other failures, he tried again and again, until one night he awoke when it was dark. He waited anxiously to hear the clocks strike. It seemed to be a very long half-hour, but the church-bell struck at last. One. Two. Three. Four. With a droning sound at the end of each stroke, as if a myriad bees, imprisoned in a cell, were giving vent to a long-sustained and simultaneous groan of entreaty to be set free; or as if the bell were wailing for the hour that was dead. Then the joyous church-bell struck. One. Two. Three. Four. A wedding-peal in each stroke; sparkling, although invisible, like stars in a clear sky on a frosty night.

Dan went to sleep, almost perfectly happy.

He repeated his experiment every night, until he had a very nearly perfect command over sleep

« PredošláPokračovať »