3 SEPTEMBER 1892, Page 18

DREAMS.

[To THE EDITOR 01 THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your interesting article on Mr. Greenwood's paper brings to my mind a curious dream of my boyhood—one among very many. When I was a boy about twelve years of age, I had to learn, as a part of my " evening preparation," a page of what was then called a " table-book,"—a list of weights and measures, most of them obsolete, all of them nearly useless. In my effort to learn this, to repeat to my mother before going to bed, I broke down hopelessly, and she, like a wise woman, told me to put it away and try again in the morning. I put it away, but not till the morning, for during the night the task was learnt in a dream. The difficult page was before me as vividly as is the paper on which I am now writing. The column of useless stuff was read by me in my dream two or three times, and then, with closed book, I repeated it to myself. The battle was won. The next morning, without again looking at the page, I repeated it to my mother. Surely there is something here interesting to the Psychical Society. This page, which I utterly failed to learn in my waking moments, was, notwithstanding, stamped on some- thing, somewhere, and reproduced in my sleep. To conclude, as you concluded your article, " Truly, such stuff as dreams are made of ' is a material which we have yet to analyse."—I [We had no idea that this, the commonest of intellectual experiences, was ever questioned.—En. Spectator.]