CORRESPONDENCE.
THE COUNTRY OF DREAMS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR-^]
StE,—Is there a country of Dreamland somewhere in exist- ence in the four dimensions, or in a planet resembling ours, but in another system ? Most of us probably visit certain localities in our dreams till we know them more accurately than places seen in our waking life. The " Brushwood Boy" was even able to draw a map of the country of his dreams; but in his case perhaps one should rather say countries, for ho traversed great distances, the larger part of a whole world. His dreamland, too, contained much that was abnormal, like the stone lily that was Hong-kong and floated on the water. Outside fiction, people do not appear to dream of such creatures of Wonderland: the dreams told at the breakfast- table are concerned with everyday objects. The writer, in his dreams, has learnt to know a-railway, or-perhaps two railways, for he has never discovered to a certainty if the well- known station of one dream has lines of communication with two other stations between which lie frequently travels —in Dreamland. The first is the most interesting, and he has never seen it as yet in ordinary life. It is placed in a large city, near to a great central square, which is surrounded by tall buildings, shops, and the like, and, on the whole, has a foreign look, though the inconvenience of the station gives it a resemblance to several in England. Out of the square, on what the dreamer takes to be the northern side, run two narrow parallel streets, and one of these—the eastern—goes steeply uphill, and has many lights, for it is always evening, and a winter's evening, when he is there. Leaving the square on the side opposite to the steep streets, you go down by a wide road to the station, the railway being carried overhead by an embankment and a bridge. The stairs and passage- ways by which one ascends to the platform are scandalously bad. Narrow, dark, dirty, stuffy, they are by no means pleasant after the fresh and open city square. The ticket- office is placed in an extremely inconvenient corner on the way up ; jostling and being jostled by other people, one reaches the platform at last. It is one of three. The dreamer is always on the platform first reached, nor has he ever seen any passengers on the other two, though he meets so many people on his way up. Apparently, everybody else is going away from the train. The platforms, like the lower regions, are in gloom. The middle one is entirely visible ; the further side of the third is always lost in darkness ; you cannot see what lies beyond it. So with that end of the station where the train always passes out. It is shrouded in dark mists. The train enters the station ; the traveller gets in and is carried into the mists, whither he never knows, nor does he know what adventures befall him as a passenger. But the city square, and the ways which lead to the railway, are as familiar to him as Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross ; he has been there so often. Of the rest of the town he knows nothing ; except that south- wards, beyond the station, there is pretty, open country. But he has seen the roads and lanes only by night. Now, is this often-visited place an actual town, somewhere in the world of waking life, which the dreamer will some time see in brick and stone and iron ? In the classical examples, there is always such a result after an impressive or repeated vision. But the dreamer, though he has visited a good many towns in England and abroad, has never yet seen the original of that familiar spot. Is there perhaps another country existent very much resembling this, and does the dreamer's consciousness visit that country at times when it is not on duty here ? Or has his imagination invented for him this city of Dreamland, and does it take a pleasure in visiting its invention frequently ? He knows one or two other dream- railways fairly welL There is one that runs due east and west, and be always gets into some complication halfway along it. Another—or perhaps the same ; he is not certain on the point —has a curious triangular platform at a station much used by the dreamer. The trains travel along all the three sides, but exactly how they do it, or why, he does not know ; there are never any collisions. On the whole, it seems probable that these trains must be running in a country of four dimensions. But if there really is a fourth-dimension Dreamland, we shall find our responsibilities and difficulties increased. The writer, for instance, woke one night with a sense of something left undone which the circumstances by no means justified. Every- body is familiarwith such a sensation, and we generally find that the haunting idea is explained, sooner or later, by the remem- brance of some omitted duty. In this case his dream before waking slowly came back to his mind. In the dream he had been with a child at a village distant many miles from their home. They believed themselves to have come on bicycles, and were in much difficulty about the means of returning. The dreamer woke, and so was delivered out of his perplexi- ties, but he bad an uncomfortable and most illogical feeling for a while that the child was left alone in a strange place, deserted by the person to whom he looked for protection. But, like most people probably, the dreamer has often been guilty of the most preposterous and impossible actions in Dreamland ; and, therefore, he sincerely trusts that the hypothesis of an existent country, in a similar planet, is not the true one. If it is, then we can only hope that the four- dimensioned Dreamland enjoys a standard of conduct different from that which we use here ; otherwise the dreamers of this world must have a fantastic reputation there.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A. J. C.
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