The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1874-03-01
sHE MORNING STAR AND CATHOLIC MESSENGER MARCH

| lively and improbable dream--a fantastic,
beautiful vision-to relieve our platitudes;
1t is the secret of opium eating, and nall
the secret of drunkenness and hasheesh-the
desire to escape frem the enormous trials, the
| fatigues, the annoyances, and ennut OF daily
life
But the average dream is not to be depended
on its only law of regularity is it's Irregular
| ity. One thing is certain: the fatality which
| awaits upon effort We never arrive at our
journeys end in a dream all is there out com
pleteness we are dreaming terrible parody
on human life, always. The trunk is never
packed, the rooms are never ready, the dinner
is never cooked, the dress is never completed.
| 1t is impossible, by any law which has yet
| been recognized, to account for this peculiarly.
Still less can we account for the conduct OF our
| best friends. They invariably desert us. One
lady, whom have heard tell her dreams, says
that her husband always becomes sattrcai
monster in dream-land soothing at her-a sort
of combination of Voltaire and Machiaveill-
so that often she rises from her couch TO 60 10
his to demonstrate with him, when she finds
| the amiable gentleman quietly snoozing away
in the sleep OF the just. He has never, she
says, in waking moments, shown his satirlcal
side The phantoms of land have evil
IDENTIFY spite against her married happiness.
All this, and more we have experienced. The
memory, too. plays us strange tricks, "a ana 40
brings mp some "lsland passed in the sea OF
reading" some face we have forgotten, or some
dead quarrel we had buried out of sight. The
average dream is strangely full of repulsive
animals monkeys and snakes run riot in 1t ;
it is a sort of mild deiirium tremens occasion
ally. One excellent and well regulated lady
dreamed continually that she was rolled up
with monkey, q horrible and grinning ape,
in piece of mating, she sort of involuntary
Cleopatra and, in this miserable society, was
rolled down hill all night. Nothing in old
| mythology is moro horrible than this dream OF
the animals. An equally unacconntable dream
was that of n lawyer, who dreamed every
night, for ten years, that he went on board
| steamship, got half way over to Europe, ana
suffered, in md-ocean, perpetual shipwreck.
a
encountered n shipwreck. He had, 1T is true,
| with most lawyers in this commercial era,
much steamship business, but he suffered any
thing but shpwreck in the conduct of that.
Perhaps this dream the fee he pad to the
Enmenides, his way of throwing the pearl of
sleep into the sea. With very sensible and
prohibited as a weak and foolish pastime. Old
DR. Watts, in his immortal classic of "The
Sluggard," gives the telling of dreams sar-
castle reprOof:
| :" l paid him visit, in hopes 1 should find
ne hI ,ook ogtter care lHp nPfoTing ms d
lie scarce reads his Bible and never loves thinking
The sluggard was undoubtedly an unIecog-
nzed idealist, who escaped from the visits of
such dreadful bore, as the doctor must have
been, into the land of Nod. Doubtless the
| sluggards dreams were very agreeable ones:
he showed his appreciation of them by iudul=-
| ing in them so freely.
| That the sleep of tho condemned criminal
and that the visions of the soldier on t ne field
of battle, should be sweet, proves nothing for
! the speculative dream-observer, because, in
the first place, the fact is not we'll substanti
ated in the second place, the physique of each
! dreamer must be understood.
| Halleck used to say that Campbell's Sol
dier's Dream" had in it the most musical and
poetical verse i'll the English language:
Our bugles rang truce, as the night cloud had low
and, for the sake of that poem we will allow
| that the poor, tired soldier secs his wife and
| his little ones, and embraces them Il thousand
l. .t.>k
| the tired soldier dreamed that his thatched
cottage was in flames, aud that he arrived just
| too late to save them all ; or, more probably,
| he could not arrive at all.
When those dreams come which trouble our
affections, the dreams in which our nearest of
| kin are cruel, there is no doubt some trouble,
chronic or temporary, with the heart. That
| mysterious organ which aches when are
| greved, jumps when we are frightened, throbs
| when we are agitated, and stops beating only
! when we die, is so curiously interviewer with
| our spiritual existence, that find it hard to
| say where tho body ends and the spirit begins,
| is generally overtaxed in sleep. The recum-
| bent position is not good for it, particularly
! if itself is not in perfect order and per
fectly good heart" is rare attribute. The
mysterious messengers which it sends up to
the brain are not always able to do their work
correctly. But why the brain is dominated
over by such malicious demon, who delights
| IN simply tormenting us, is ineXplicable. One
lady dreamed that she was giving ball, her
best bedroom was being put in order for the
|
she found that " monsieur" refused to get out
of bed, much less dress himself, and help her
| receive. After much expostulation, she ia
duced him to rise, only to go back and find
that French teacher, whom she had en-
| pioyed twenty years before, and whom she
| had entirely forgotten, had taken his place,
and this gentleman coolly announced to her
that he was ill of typhoid fever, and should
not be able to rise for several weeks.
The dreams of the young, and innocent,
and pure, so often disturbed, troubled and
painful are mysterious-why should those
white souls he visited by the demons of re-
morse, crime and Injustice? l have heard
chilsren tell of such painful visions, that any
theory of dreaming would be upset. L do not
refer to the good old average ghost-he is
| simply imagination (who is always full
! grown imp, before reason has gonc out of long
dresses taking his exercise through the poor
! little bran-but refer to those huiferngs
! which we deem the exclusive property of the
| elderly and tho experienced. one young per-
son told me that he had never had an agree
! able dream in his life, and yet his life had
| been singularly placid. He dreamed always
that lie was treated with injustice that he
| committed crimes, that he was hungry, and
| poor, and naked, that crowd followed him,