Digital TranscriptionMRJDreams and Dream StoriesBy Anna Bonus KingsfordContents  PrefacePart IDreamsI  The Doomed TrainII  The Wonderful Spectacles III The Counsel of Perfection  IV  The City of BloodV  The Bird and the CatVI  The Treasure in the Lighted HouseVII  The Forest CathedralVIII  The Enchanted WomanIX  The Banquet of the GodsX  The Difficult PathXI  A Lion in the WayXII  A Dream of DisembodimentXIII  The Perfect Way with AnimalsXIV  The Laboratory UndergroundXV  The Old Young ManXVI  The MetempsychosisXVII  The Three KingsXVIII  The Armed GoddessXIX  The Game of CardsXX  The PanicStruck PackHorseXXI  The Haunted InnXXII  An Eastern ApologueXXIII  A Haunted House IndeedXXIV  The Square in the HandDream VersesI  Through the AgesII  A FragmentIII  A FragmentIV  Signs of the TimesV  With the GodsPart IIDream StoriesI  A Village of SeersII  Steepside  A Ghost StoryIII  Beyond the SunsetIV  A Turn of LuckV  NoemiVI  The Little Old Mans StoryVII  The NightshadeVIII  St George the ChevalierPrefaceThe chronicles which I am about to present to the reader are not the result of any conscious effort of the imagination  They are as the titlepage indicates records of dreams occurring at intervals during the last ten years and transcribed pretty nearly in the order of their occurrence from my Diary  Written down as soon as possible after awaking from the slumber during which they presented themselves these narratives necessarily unstudied in style and wanting in elegance of diction have at least the merit of fresh and vivid color for they were committed to paper at a moment when the effect and impress of each successive vision were strong and forceful in the mind and before the illusion of reality conveyed by the scenes witnessed and the sounds heard in sleep had had time to pass awayI do not know whether these experiences of mine are unique  So far I have not yet met with any one in whom the dreaming faculty appears to be either so strongly or so strangely developed as in myself  Most dreams even when of unusual vividness and lucidity betray a want of coherence in their action and an incongruity of detail and dramatis personae that stamp Written in 1886  Some of the experiences in this volume were subsequent to that date  This publication is made in accordance with the authors last wishes  Ed them as the product of incomplete and disjointed cerebral function  But the most remarkable features of the experiences I am about to record are the methodical consecutiveness of their sequences and the intelligent purpose disclosed alike in the events witnessed and in the words heard or read  Some of these last indeed resemble for point and profundity the apologues of Eastern scriptures  and on more than one occasion the scenery of the dream has accurately portrayed characteristics of remote regions city forest and mountain which in this existence at least I have never beheld nor so far as I can remember even heard described and yet every feature of these unfamiliar climes has revealed itself to my sleeping vision with a splendour of coloring and distinctness of outline which made the waking life seem duller and less real by contrast  I know of no parallel to this phenomenon unless in the pages of Bulwer Lyttons romance entitledThe Pilgrims of the Rhine in which is related the story of a German student endowed with so marvellous a faculty of dreaming that for him the normal conditions of sleeping and waking became reversed his true life was that which he lived in his slumbers and his hours of wakefulness appeared to him as so many uneventful and inactive intervals of arrest occurring in an existence of intense and vivid interest which was wholly passed in the hypnotic state  Not that to me there is any such inversion of natural conditions  On the contrary the priceless insights and illuminations I have acquired by means of my dreams have gone far to elucidate for me many difficulties and enigmas of life and even of religion which might otherwise have remained dark to me and to throw upon the events and vicissitudes of a career filled with bewildering situations a light which like sunshine has penetrated to the very causes and springs of circumstance and has given meaning and fitness to much in my life that would else have appeared to me incoherent or inconsistentI have no theory to offer the reader in explanation of my facultyat least in so far as its physiological aspect is concerned  Of course having received a medical education I have speculated about the modus operandi of the phenomenon but my speculations are not of such a character as to entitle them to presentation in the form even of an hypothesis  I am tolerably well acquainted with most of the propositions regarding unconscious cerebration which have been put forward by men of science but none of these propositions can by any process of reasonable expansion or modification be made to fit my case  Hysteria to the multiform and manifold categories of which medical experts are wont to refer the majority of the abnormal experiences encountered by them is plainly inadequate to explain or account for mine  The singular coherence and sustained dramatic unity observable in these dreams as well as the poetic beauty and tender subtlety of the instructions and suggestions conveyed in them do not comport with the conditions characteristic of nervous disease  Moreover during the whole period covered by these dreams I have been busily and almost continuously engrossed with scientific and literary pursuits demanding accurate judgment and complete selfpossession and rectitude of mind  At the time when many of the most vivid and remarkable visions occurred I was following my course as a student