Dreams and Dream Stories / Kingsford, Anna Bonus, 1846-1888

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Title: Dreams and Dream Stories

Author: Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5651]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August 6, 2002]
[Most recently updated on August 18, 2002]

Edition: 10

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Digital Transcription--M.R.J.


Dreams and Dream Stories
			By Anna (Bonus) Kingsford




Contents
 					 
Preface

Part I
Dreams

I.  The Doomed Train
II.  The Wonderful Spectacles 
III. The Counsel of Perfection  
IV.  The City of Blood
V.  The Bird and the Cat
VI.  The Treasure in the Lighted House
VII.  The Forest Cathedral
VIII.  The Enchanted Woman
IX.  The Banquet of the Gods
X.  The Difficult Path
XI.  A Lion in the Way
XII.  A Dream of Disembodiment
XIII.  The Perfect Way with Animals
XIV.  The Laboratory Underground
XV.  The Old Young Man
XVI.  The Metempsychosis
XVII.  The Three Kings
XVIII.  The Armed Goddess
XIX.  The Game of Cards
XX.  The Panic-Struck Pack-Horse
XXI.  The Haunted Inn
XXII.  An Eastern Apologue
XXIII.  A Haunted House Indeed!
XXIV.  The Square in the Hand

Dream Verses

I.  "Through the Ages"
II.  A Fragment
III.  A Fragment
IV.  Signs of the Times
V.  With the Gods

Part II
Dream Stories

I.  A Village of Seers
II.  Steepside;  A Ghost Story
III.  Beyond the Sunset
IV.  A Turn of Luck
V.  Noemi
VI.  The Little Old Man's Story
VII.  The Nightshade
VIII.  St. George the Chevalier





Preface*
	
The 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 title-page 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 away.
	
I 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 author's 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 Lytton's 
romance entitled--"The 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 inconsistent.
	
I have no theory to offer the reader in explanation of my faculty,
--at 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 self-possession 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 at the Paris Faculty of 
Medicine, preparing for examinations, daily visiting hospital wards 
as dresser, and attending lectures.  Later, when I had taken my 
degree, I was engaged in the duties of my profession and in writing 
for the press on scientific subjects.  Neither have I ever taken 
opium, hashish or other dream-producing agent.  A cup of tea or 
coffee represents the extent of my indulgences in this direction.  
I mention these details in order to guard against inferences which 
otherwise might be drawn as to the genesis of my faculty.
	
With regard to the interpretation and application of particular 
dreams, I think it best to say nothing.  The majority are obviously 
allegorical, and although obscure in parts, they are invariably 
harmonious, and tolerably clear in meaning to persons acquainted 
with the method of Greek and Oriental myth.  I shall not, therefore, 
venture on any explanation of my own, but shall simply record the 
dreams as they passed before me, and the impressions left upon my 
mind when I awoke.
	
Unfortunately, in some instances, which are not, therefore, here 
transcribed, my waking memory failed to recall accurately, or 
completely, certain discourses heard or written words seen in the 
course of the vision, which in these cases left but a fragmentary 
impression on the brain and baffled all waking endeavor to recall 
their missing passages.
	
These imperfect experiences have not, however, been numerous;  on 
the contrary, it is a perpetual marvel to me to find with what ease 
and certainty I can, as a rule, on recovering ordinary consciousness, 
recall the picture witnessed in my sleep, and reproduce the words 
I have heard spoken or seen written.
	
Sometimes several interims of months occur during which none of these 
exceptional visions visit me, but only ordinary dreams, incongruous 
and insignificant after their kind.  Observation, based on an 
experience of considerable length, justifies me, I think, in saying 
that climate, altitude, and electrical conditions are not without 
their influence in the production of the cerebral state necessary 
to the exercise of the faculty I have described.  Dry air, high 
levels, and a crisp, calm, exhilarating atmosphere favor its activity;  
while, on the other hand, moisture, proximity to rivers, cloudy 
skies, and a depressing, heavy climate, will, for an indefinite 
period, suffice to repress it altogether.  It is not, therefore, 
surprising that the greater number of these dreams, and, especially, 
the most vivid, detailed and idyllic, have occurred to me while 
on the continent.  At my own residence on the banks of the Severn, 
in a humid, low-lying tract of country, I very seldom experience 
such manifestations, and sometimes, after a prolonged sojourn at 
home, am tempted to fancy that the dreaming gift has left me never 
to return.  But the results of a visit to Paris or to Switzerland 
always speedily reassure me;  the necessary magnetic or psychic 
tension never fails to reassert itself;  and before many weeks have 
elapsed my Diary is once more rich with the record of my 
nightly visions.
	
Some of these phantasmagoria have furnished me with the framework, and 
even details, of stories which from time to time I have contributed 
to various magazines.  A ghost story,* published some years ago in 
a London magazine, and much commented on because of its peculiarly 
weird and startling character, had this origin;  so had a fairy tale,** 
which appeared in a Christmas Annual last year, and which has recently 
been re-issued in German by the editor of a foreign periodical. Many 
of my more

---------------
* "Steepside"  
** "Beyond the Sunset"
---------------- 

serious contributions to literature have been similarly initiated;  
and, more than once, fragments of poems, both in English and other 
languages, have been heard or read by me in dreams.  I regret much 
that I have not yet been able to recover any one entire poem.  My 
memory always failed before I could finish writing out the lines, 
no matter how luminous and recent the impressions made by them on 
my mind.*  However, even as regards verses, my experience has been 
far richer and more successful than that of Coleridge, the only 
product of whose faculty in this direction was the poetical fragment 
Kubla Khan, and there was no scenic dreaming on the occasion, only 
the verses were thus obtained;  and I am not without hope that at 
some future time, under more favorable conditions than those I now 
enjoy, the broken threads may be resumed and these chapters of dream 
verse perfected and made complete.
	
It may, perhaps, be worthy of remark that by far the larger number 
of the dreams set down in this volume, occurred towards dawn;  
sometimes even, after sunrise, during a "second sleep."  A condition 
of fasting, united possibly, with some subtle magnetic or other 
atmospheric state, seems therefore to be that most open to impressions 
of the kind.  And, in this connection, I think it right to add that 
for the past fifteen years I have been an abstainer from flesh-meats;  
not a "Vegetarian," because during the whole of that period I have 
used such

-----------
* The poem entitled "A Discourse on the Communion of Souls; or, the 
Uses of Love between Creature and Creature, Being a part of the 
Golden Book of Venus," which forms one of the appendices to "The 
Perfect Way," would be an exception to this rule but that it was 
necessary for the dream to be repeated before the whole poem could 
be recalled.  (Ed.)
-------------- 

animal produce as butter, cheese, eggs, and milk.  That the influence 
of fasting and of sober fare upon the perspicacity of the sleeping 
brain was known to the ancients in times when dreams were far more 
highly esteemed than they now are, appears evident from various 
passages in the records of theurgy and mysticism.  Philostratus, 
in his "Life of Apollonius Tyaneus," represents the latter as informing 
King Phraotes that "the Oneiropolists, or Interpreters of Visions, 
are wont never to interpret any vision till they have first inquired 
the time at which it befell;  for, if it were early, and of the 
morning sleep, they then thought that they might make a good 
interpretation thereof (that is, that it might be worth the 
interpreting), in that the soul was then fitted for divination, 
and disencumbered.  But if in the first sleep, or near midnight, 
while the soul was as yet clouded and drowned in libations, they, 
being wise, refused to give any interpretation.  Moreover, the gods 
themselves are of this opinion, and send their oracles only into 
abstinent minds.  For the priests, taking him who doth so consult, 
keep him one day from meat and three days from wine, that he may 
in a clear soul receive the oracles."  And again, Iamblichus, writing 
to Agathocles, says:--"There is nothing unworthy of belief in what 
you have been told concerning the sacred sleep, and seeing by means 
of dreams.  I explain it thus:--The soul has a twofold life, a lower 
and a higher.  In sleep the soul is liberated from the constraint 
of the body, and enters, as an emancipated being, on its divine 
life of intelligence.  Then, as the noble faculty which beholds 
objects that truly are--the objects in the world of intelligence--
stirs within, and awakens to its power, who can be astonished that 
the mind which contains in itself the principles of all events, 
should, in this its state of liberation, discern the future in those 
antecedent principles which will constitute that future?  The nobler 
part of the mind is thus united by abstraction to higher natures, 
and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the 
gods . . . . The night-time of the body is the day-time of the soul."
	
But I have no desire to multiply citations, nor to vex the reader 
with hypotheses inappropriate to the design of this little work.  
Having, therefore, briefly recounted the facts and circumstances 
of my experience so far as they are known to myself, I proceed, 
without further commentary, to unroll my chart of dream-pictures, 
and leave them to tell their own tale.

--A.B.K.





I.  The Doomed Train*




I was visited last night by a dream of so strange and vivid a kind 
that I feel impelled to communicate it to you, not only to relieve 
my own mind of the impression which the recollection of it causes me, 
but also to give you an opportunity of finding the meaning, which 
I am sill far too much shaken and terrified to seek for myself.
	
It seemed to me that you and I were two of a vast company of men 
and women, upon all of whom, with the exception of myself--for I 
was there voluntarily--sentence of death had been passed.  I was 
sensible of the knowledge--how obtained I know not--that this terrible 
doom had been pronounced by the official agents of some new reign 
of terror.  Certain I was that none of the party had really been 
guilty of any crime deserving of death;  but that the penalty had 
been incurred through

------------------
* This narrative was addressed to the friend particularly referred 
to in it.  The dream occurred near the close of 1876, and on the 
eve, therefore, of the Russo-Turkish war, and was regarded by us 
both as having relation to a national crisis, of a moral and spiritual 
character, our interest in which was so profound as to be destined 
to dominate all our subsequent lives and work.  (Author's Note.)
--------------- 

their connection with some regime, political, social or religious, 
which was doomed to utter destruction.  It became known among us 
that the sentence was about to be carried out on a colossal scale;  
but we remained in absolute ignorance as to the place and method 
of the intended execution.  Thus far my dream gave me no intimation 
of the horrible scene which next burst on me,--a scene which strained 
to their utmost tension every sense of sight, hearing and touch, 
in a manner unprecedented in any dream I have previously had.
	
It was night, dark and starless, and I found myself, together with 
the whole company of doomed men and women who knew that they were 
soon to die, but not how or where, in a railway train hurrying 
through the darkness to some unknown destination.  I sat in a 
carriage quite at the rear end of the train, in a corner seat, and 
was leaning out of the open window, peering into the darkness, when, 
suddenly, a voice, which seemed to speak out of the air, said to 
me in a low, distinct, in-tense tone, the mere recollection of which 
makes me shudder,--"The sentence is being carried out even now.  
You are all of you lost.  Ahead of the train is a frightful precipice 
of monstrous height, and at its base beats a fathomless sea.  The 
railway ends only with the abyss, Over that will the train hurl 
itself into annihilation, There Is No One On The Engine!"
	
At this I sprang from my seat in horror, and looked round at the 
faces of the persons in the carriage with me.  No one of them had 
spoken, or had heard those awful words.  The lamplight from the 
dome of the carriage flickered on the forms, about me.  I looked 
from one to the other, but saw no sign of alarm given by any of them.  
Then again the voice out of the air spoke to me,--"There is but 
one way to be saved.  You must leap out of the train!"
	
In frantic haste I pushed open the carriage door and stepped out 
on the footboard.  The train was going at a terrific pace, swaying 
to and fro as with the passion of its speed;  and the mighty wind 
of its passage beat my hair about my face and tore at my garments.
	
Until this moment I had not thought of you, or even seemed conscious 
of your presence in the train.  Holding tightly on to the rail by 
the carriage door, I began to creep along the footboard towards the 
engine, hoping to find a chance of dropping safely down on the line.  
Hand over hand I passed along in this way from one carriage to another;  
and as I did so I saw by the light within each carriage that the 
passengers had no idea of the fate upon which they were being hurried.  
At length, in one of the compartments, I saw you.  "Come out!" I cried;  
"come out!  Save yourself!  In another minute we shall be dashed 
to pieces!"
	
You rose instantly, wrenched open the door, and stood beside me 
outside on the footboard.  The rapidity at which we were going was 
now more fearful than ever.  The train rocked as it fled onwards.  
The wind shrieked as we were carried through it.  "Leap down," I 
cried to you;  "save yourself!  It is certain death to stay here.  
Before us is an abyss;  and there is no one on the engine!"
	
At this you turned your face full upon me with a look of intense 
earnestness, and said, "No, we will not leap down.  We will stop 
the train."
	
With these words you left me, and crept along the foot-board towards 
the front of the train.  Full of half angry anxiety at what seemed 
to me a Quixotic act, I followed.   In one of the carriages we 
passed I saw my mother and eldest brother, unconscious as the rest.  
Presently we reached the last carriage, and saw by the lurid light 
of the furnace that the voice had spoken truly, and that there was 
no one on the engine.
	
You continued to move onwards.  "Impossible!  Impossible!" I cried;  
"It cannot be done.  O, pray, come away."
	
Then you knelt upon the footboard, and said,--"You are right.  It 
cannot be done in that way;  but we can save the train.  Help me 
to get these irons asunder."
	
The engine was connected with the train by two great iron hooks 
and staples.  By a tremendous effort, in making which I almost lost 
my balance, we unhooked the irons and detached the train;  when, 
with a mighty leap as of some mad supernatural monster, the engine 
sped on its way alone, shooting back as it went a great flaming 
trail of sparks, and was lost in the darkness.  We stood together 
on the footboard, watching in silence the gradual slackening of 
the speed.  When at length the train had come to a standstill, we 
cried to the passengers, "Saved! Saved!" and then amid the confusion 
of opening the doors and descending and eager talking, my dream 
ended, leaving me shattered and palpitating with the horror of it.
					
--London, Nov. 1876.





II.  The Wonderful Spectacles*
 	



I was walking alone on the seashore. The day was singularly clear 
and sunny.  Inland lay the most beautiful landscape ever seen;  
and far off were ranges of tall hills, the highest peaks of which 
were white with glittering snows.  Along the sands by the sea came 
towards me a man accoutred as a postman.  He gave me a letter.  
It was from you.  It ran thus:--
	
"I have got hold of the earliest and most precious book extant.  
It was written before the world began.  The text is easy enough 
to read;  but the notes, which are very copious and numerous, are 
in such minute and obscure characters that I cannot make them out.  
I want you to get for me the spectacles which Swedenborg used to 
wear;  not the smaller pair--those he gave to Hans Christian 
Andersen--but the large pair, and these seem to have got mislaid.  
I think they are Spinoza's make.  You know he was an optical-glass 
maker by profession, and the best we have ever had.  See if you 
can get them for me."
	
When I looked up after reading this letter, I saw the postman 
hastening away across the sands, and I cried out to him, "Stop! 
how am I to send the answer?  Will you not wait for it?"
	
He looked round, stopped, and came back to me.
	
"I have the answer here," he said, tapping his letter-bag, "and I 
shall deliver it immediately."
	
-------------
* From another letter to the friend mentioned in the note appended 
to the "Doomed Train."--(Author's Note.)
------------- 

"How can you have the answer before I have written it?" I asked.  
"You are making a mistake."
	
"No," he said."  In the city from which I come, the replies are 
all written at the office, and sent out with the letters themselves.  
Your reply is in my bag."
	
"Let me see it," I said.  He took another letter from his wallet 
and gave it to me.  I opened it, and read, in my own handwriting, 
this answer, addressed to you:--
	
"The spectacles you want can be bought in London.  But you will 
not be able to use them at once, for they have not been worn for 
many years, and they sadly want cleaning.  This you will not be 
able to do yourself in London, because it is too dark there to see 
well, and because your fingers are not small enough to clean them 
properly.  Bring them here to me, and I will do it for you."
	
I gave this letter back to the postman.  He smiled and nodded at me;  
and I then perceived to my astonishment that he wore a camel's-hair 
tunic round his waist.  I had been on the point of addressing him--
I know not why--as Hermes.  But I now saw that he must be John the 
Baptist;  and in my fright at having spoken with so great a saint, 
I awoke!

--London, Jan. 31, 1877

------------------------
* The dreamer knew nothing of Spinoza at this time, and was quite 
unaware that he was an optician.  Subsequent experience made it clear 
that the spectacles in question were intended to represent her own 
remarkable faculty of intuitional and interpretative perception. (Ed.)
-------------------





III.  The Counsel of Perfection



 
I dreamed that I was in a large room, and there were in it seven 
persons, all men, sitting at one long table;  and each of them had 
before him a scroll, some having books also;  and all were greyheaded 
and bent with age save one, and this was a youth of about twenty 
without hair on his face.  One of the aged men, who had his finger 
on a place in a book open before him, said:
	
"This spirit, who is of our order, writes in this book,--'Be ye 
perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect.'  How shall 
we understand this word `perfection'?"  And another, of the old 
men, looking up, answered, "It must mean wisdom, for wisdom is the 
sum of perfection."  And another old man said, "That cannot be;  
for no creature can be wise as God is wise.  Where is he among us 
who could attain to such a state?  That which is part only, cannot 
comprehend the whole.  To bid a creature to be wise as God is wise 
would be mockery."
	
Then a fourth old man said:--"It must be Truth that is intended.  
For truth only is perfection."  But he who sat next the last speaker 
answered, "Truth also is partial;  for where is he among us who 
shall be able to see as God sees?"
	
And the sixth said, "It must surely be justice;  for this is the 
whole of righteousness."  And the old man who had spoken first, 
answered him:  "Not so;  for justice comprehends vengeance, and 
it is written that vengeance is the Lord's alone." 
	
Then the young man stood up with an open book in his hand and said:
--"I have here another record of one who likewise heard these words.  
Let us see whether his rendering of them can help us to the knowledge 
we seek."  And he found a place in the book and read aloud:--
	
"Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful."
	
And all of them closed their books and fixed their eyes upon me.

--London, April 9, 1877
 




IV.  The City of Blood

	


I dreamed that I was wandering along a narrow street of vast length, 
upon either hand of which was an unbroken line of high straight 
houses, their walls and doors resembling those of a prison.  The 
atmosphere was dense and obscure, and the time seemed that of twilight;  
in the narrow line of sky visible far overhead between the two rows 
of house-roofs, I could not discern sun, moon, or stars, or color 
of any kind.  All was grey, impenetrable, and dim.  Underfoot, between 
the paving-stones of the street, grass was springing.  Nowhere was 
the least sign of life:  the place seemed utterly deserted.  I stood 
alone in the midst of profound silence and desolation.  Silence?  
No!  As I listened, there came to my ears from all sides, dully 
at first and almost imperceptibly, a low creeping sound like subdued 
moaning;  a sound that never ceased, and that was so native to the 
place, I had at first been unaware of it.  But now I clearly gathered 
in the sound and recognised it as expressive of the intensest physical 
suffering.  Looking steadfastly towards one of the houses from which 
the most distinct of these sounds issued, I perceived a stream of 
blood slowly oozing out from beneath the door and trickling down 
into the street, staining the tufts of grass red here and there, 
as it wound its way towards me.  I glanced up and saw that the glass 
in the closed and barred windows of the house was flecked and splashed 
with the same horrible dye.
	
"Some one has been murdered in this place!" I cried, and flew towards 
the door.  Then, for the first time, I perceived that the door had 
neither lock nor handle on the outside, but could be opened only 
from within.  It had, indeed, the form and appearance of a door, 
but in every other respect it was solid and impassable as the walls 
themselves.  In vain I searched for bell or knocker, or for some 
means of making entry into the house.  I found only a scroll fastened 
with nails upon a crossbeam over the door, and upon it I read the 
words:--"This is the Laboratory of a Vivisector."  As I read, the 
wailing sound redoubled in intensity, and a noise as of struggling 
made itself audible within, as though some new victim had been added 
to the first.  I beat madly against the door with my hands and 
shrieked for help;  but in vain.  My dress was reddened with the 
blood upon the door step.  In horror I looked down upon it, then 
turned and fled.  As I passed along the street, the sounds around 
me grew and gathered volume, formulating themselves into distinct 
cries and bursts of frenzied sobbing.  Upon the door of every house 
some scroll was attached, similar to that I had already seen.  Upon 
one was inscribed:--"Here is a husband murdering his wife:"  upon 
another:--"Here is a mother beating her child to death:"  upon a 
third:  "This is a slaughter-house." 
	
Every door was impassable;  every window was barred.  The idea of 
interference from without was futile.  Vainly I lifted my voice 
and cried for aid.  The street was desolate as a graveyard;  the 
only thing that moved about me was the stealthy blood that came 
creeping out from beneath the doors of these awful dwellings.  Wild 
with horror I fled along the street, seeking some outlet, the cries 
and moans pursuing me as I ran.  At length the street abruptly ended 
in a high dead wall, the top of which was not discernible;  it seemed, 
indeed, to be limitless in height.  Upon this wall was written in 
great black letters-- "There is no way out."
	
Overwhelmed with despair and anguish, I fell upon the stones of 
the street, repeating aloud "There is no way out."

- Hinton, Jan. 1877
 




V.  The Bird and the Cat *

	


I dreamt that I had a beautiful bird in a cage, and that the cage 
was placed on a table in a room where there was a cat.  I took the 
bird out of the cage and put him on the table.  Instantly the cat 
sprang upon

-----------------
* This dream and the next occurred at a moment when it had almost 
been decided to relax the rule of privacy until then observed in 
regard to our psychological experiences, among other ways, by 
submitting them to some of the savants of the Paris Faculty,--a 
project of which these dreams at once caused the abandonment.  This 
was not the only occasion on which a dream bore a twofold aspect, 
being a warning or a prediction, according to the heed given to it. (Ed.) 
------------------

him and seized him in her mouth.  I threw myself upon her and strove 
to wrest away her prey, loading her with reproaches and bewailing 
the fate of my beautiful bird.  Then suddenly some one said to me, 
"You have only yourself to blame for this misfortune.  While the 
bird remained in his cage he was safe.  Why should you have taken 
him out before the eyes of the cat?"
 




VI.  The Treasure in the Lighted House

	


A second time I dreamt, and saw a house built in the midst of a 
forest.  It was night, and all the rooms of the house were brilliantly 
illuminated by lamps.  But the strange thing was that the windows 
were without shutters, and reached to the ground.  In one of the 
rooms sat an old man counting money and jewels on a table before him.  
I stood in the spirit beside him, and presently heard outside the 
windows a sound of footsteps and of men's voices talking together 
in hushed tones.  Then a face peered in at the lighted room, and 
I became aware that there were many persons assembled without in 
the darkness, watching the old man and his treasure.  He also heard 
them, and rose from his seat in alarm, clutching his gold and gems 
and endeavoring to hide them.
	
"Who are they?" I asked him.  He answered, his face white with terror;  
"They are robbers and assassins.  This forest is their haunt.  They 
will murder me, and seize my treasure."  "If this be so," said I, 
"why did you build your house in the midst of this forest, and why 
are there no shutters to the windows?  Are you mad, or a fool, that 
you do not know every one can see from without into your lighted 
rooms?"  He looked at me with stupid despair.  "I never thought 
of the shutters," said he.
	
As we stood talking, the robbers outside congregated in great numbers, 
and the old man fled from the room with his treasure bags into another 
apartment.  But this also was brilliantly illuminated within, and 
the windows were shutterless.  The robbers followed his movements 
easily, and so pursued him from room to room all round the house.  
Nowhere had he any shelter.  Then came the sound of gouge and mallet 
and saw, and I knew the assassins were breaking into the house, 
and that before long, the owner would have met the death his folly 
had invited, and his treasure would pass into the hands of the robbers.
						
--Paris, Aug. 3, 1877 





VII.  The Forest Cathedral 

	


I found myself--accompanied by a guide, a young man of Oriental 
aspect and habit--passing through long vistas of trees which, as 
we advanced, continually changed in character.  Thus we threaded 
avenues of English oaks and elms, the foliage of which gave way 
as we proceeded to that of warmer and moister climes, and we saw 
overhead the hanging masses of broad-leaved palms, and enormous trees 
whose names I do not know, spreading their fingered leaves over 
us like great green hands in a manner that frightened me.  Here also 
I saw huge grasses which rose over my shoulders, and through which 
I had at times to beat my way as through a sea;  and ferns of colossal 
proportions;  with every possible variety and mode of tree-life 
and every conceivable shade of green, from the faintest and clearest 
yellow to the densest blue-green.  One wood in particular I stopped 
to admire.  It seemed as though every leaf of its trees were of gold, 
so intensely yellow was the tint of the foliage.
	
In these forests and thickets were numerous shrines of gods such 
as the Hindus worship.  Every now and then we came upon them in 
open spaces.  They were uncouth and rudely painted;  but they all 
were profusely adorned with gems, chiefly turquoises, and they all 
had many arms and hands, in which they held lotus flowers, sprays 
of palms, and colored berries.
	
Passing by these strange figures, we came to a darker part of our 
course, where the character of the trees changed and the air felt 
colder.  I perceived that a shadow had fallen on the way;  and 
looking upwards I found we were passing beneath a massive roof of 
dark indigo-colored pines, which here and there were positively 
black in their intensity and depth.  Intermingled with them were firs, 
whose great, straight stems were covered with lichen and mosses of 
beautiful variety, and some looking strangely like green ice-crystals.
	
Presently we came to a little broken-down rude kind of chapel in 
the midst of the wood.  It was built of stone;  and masses of stone, 
shapeless and moss-grown, were lying scattered about on the ground 
around it.  At a little rough-hewn altar within it stood a Christian 
priest, blessing the elements.  Overhead, the great dark sprays of 
the larches and cone-laden firs swept its roof.  I sat down to rest 
on one of the stones, and looked upwards a while at the foliage.  
Then turning my gaze again towards the earth, I saw a vast circle 
of stones, moss-grown like that on which I sat, and ranged in a 
circle such as that of Stonehenge.  It occupied an open space in 
the midst of the forest;  and the grasses and climbing plants of 
the place had fastened on the crevices of the stones.
	
One stone, larger and taller than the rest, stood at the junction 
of the circle, in a place of honor, as though it had stood for a 
symbol of divinity.  I looked at my guide, and said, " Here, at 
least, is an idol whose semblance belongs to another type than that 
of the Hindus."  He smiled, and turning from me to the Christian 
priest at the altar, said aloud, "Priest, why do your people receive 
from sacerdotal hands the bread only, while you yourselves receive 
both bread and wine?"  And the priest answered, "We receive no more 
than they.  Yes, though under another form, the people are partakers 
with us of the sacred wine with its particle.  The blood is the 
life of the flesh, and of it the flesh is formed, and without it 
the flesh could not consist.  The communion is the same."
	
Then the young man my guide turned again to me and waved his hand 
towards the stone before me.  And as I looked the stone opened from 
its summit to its base;  and I saw that the strata within had the 
form of a tree, and that every minute crystal of which it was formed,
--particles so fine that grains of sand would have been coarse in 
comparison with, them,--and every atom composing its mass, were 
stamped with this same tree-image, and bore the shape of the 
ice-crystals, of the ferns and of the colossal palm-leaves I had 
seen.  And my guide said, "Before these stones were, the Tree of 
Life stood in the midst of the Universe."
	
And again we passed on, leaving behind us the chapel and the circle 
of stones, the pines and the firs:  and as we went the foliage 
around us grew more and more stunted and like that at home.  We 
traveled quickly;  but now and then, through breaks and openings 
in the woods, I saw solitary oaks standing in the midst of green 
spaces, and beneath them kings giving judgment to their peoples, 
and magistrates administering laws.
	
At last we came to a forest of trees so enormous that they made 
me tremble to look at them.  The hugeness of their stems gave them 
an unearthly appearance;  for they rose hundreds of feet from the 
ground before they burst out far, far above us, into colossal 
masses of vast-leaved foliage.  I cannot sufficiently convey the 
impressions of awe with which the sight of these monster trees 
inspired me.  There seemed to me something pitiless and phantom-like 
in the severity of their enormous bare trunks, stretching on without 
break or branch into the distance--overhead, and there at length 
giving birth to a sea of dark waving plumes, the rustle of which 
reached my ears as the sound of tossing waves.
	
Passing beneath these vast trees we came to others of smaller growth, 
but still of the same type,--straight-stemmed, with branching foliage 
at their summit.  Here we stood to rest, and as we paused I became 
aware that the trees around me were losing their color, and turning 
by imperceptible degrees into stone.  In nothing was their form 
or position altered;  only a cold, grey hue overspread them, and 
the intervening spaces between their stems became filled up, as 
though by a cloud which gradually grew substantial.  Presently I 
raised my eyes, and lo! overhead were the arches of a vast cathedral, 
spanning the sky and hiding it from my sight.  The tree stems had 
become tall columns of grey stone;  and their plumed tops, the carven 
architraves and branching spines of Gothic sculpture.  The incense 
rolled in great dense clouds to their outstretching arms, and, 
breaking against them, hung in floating, fragrant wreaths about 
their carven sprays.  Looking downwards to the altar, I found it 
covered with flowers and plants and garlands, in the midst of which 
stood a great golden crucifix, and I turned to my guide wishing 
to question him, but he had disappeared, and I could not find him.  
Then a vast crowd of worshipers surrounded me, a priest before the 
altar raised the pyx and the patten in his hands.  The people fell 
on their knees, and bent their heads, as a great field of corn over 
which a strong wind passes.  I knelt with the rest, and adored with 
them in silence.

--Paris, July 1877 





VIII.  The Enchanted Woman*

	


The first consciousness which broke my sleep last night was one 
of floating, of being carried swiftly by some invisible force through 
a vast space;  then, of being gently lowered;  then of light, until, 
gradually, I found myself on

---------------
* On the night previous to this dream, Mrs Kingsford was awoke by 
a bright light, and beheld a hand holding out towards her a glass 
of foaming ale, the action being accompanied by the words, spoken 
with strong emphasis,--" You must not drink this."  It was not her 
usual beverage, but she occasionally yielded to pressure and took 
it when at home.  In consequence of the above prohibition she 
abstained for that day, and on the following night received this 
vision, in order to fit her for which the prohibition had apparently 
been imposed.  It was originally entitled a Vision of the World's 
Fall, on the supposition that it represented the loss of the Intuition, 
mystically called the "Fall of the Woman," through the sorceries 
of priestcraft.  (Ed.)
------------------
 
my feet in a broad noon-day brightness, and before me an open country.  
Hills, hills, as far as the eye could reach,--hills with snow on 
their tops, and mists around their gorges.  This was the first thing 
I saw distinctly.  Then, casting my eyes towards the ground, I 
perceived that all about me lay huge masses of grey material which, 
at first, I took for blocks of stone, having the form of lions;  
but as I looked at them more intently, my sight grew clearer, and 
I saw, to my horror, that they were really alive.  A panic seized me, 
and I tried to run away;  but on turning, I became suddenly aware 
that the whole country was filled with these awful shapes;  and 
the faces of those nearest to me were most dreadful, for their eyes, 
and something in the expression, though not in the form, of their 
faces, were human.  I was absolutely alone in a terrible world peopled 
with lions, too, of a monstrous kind.  Recovering myself with an 
effort, I resumed my flight, but, as I passed through the midst of 
this concourse of monsters, it suddenly struck me that they were 
perfectly unconscious of my presence.  I even laid my hands, in 
passing, on the heads and manes of several, but they gave no sign 
of seeing me or of knowing that I touched them.  At last I gained 
the threshold of a great pavilion, not, apparently, built by hands, 
but formed by Nature.  The walls were solid, yet they were composed 
of huge trees standing close together, like columns;  and the roof 
of the pavilion was formed by their massive foliage, through which 
not a ray of outer light penetrated.  Such light as there was seemed 
nebulous, and appeared to rise out of the ground.  In the centre 
of this pavilion I stood alone, happy to have got clear away from 
those terrible beasts and the gaze of their steadfast eyes.
	
As I stood there, I became conscious of the fact that the nebulous 
light of the place was concentrating itself into a focus on the 
columned wall opposite to me.  It grew there, became intenser, and 
then spread, revealing, as it spread, a series of moving pictures 
that appeared to be scenes actually enacted before me.  For the 
figures in the pictures were living, and they moved before my eyes, 
though I heard neither word nor sound.  And this is what I saw.  
First there came a writing on the wall of the pavilion:--" This 
is the History of our World."  These words, as I looked at them, 
appeared to sink into the wall as they had risen out of it, and 
to yield place to the pictures which then began to come out in 
succession, dimly at first, then strong and clear as actual scenes.
	
First I beheld a beautiful woman, with the sweetest face and most 
perfect form conceivable.  She was dwelling in a cave among the 
hills with her husband, and he, too, was beautiful, more like an 
angel than a man.  They seemed perfectly happy together;  and their 
dwelling was like Paradise.  On every side was beauty, sunlight, 
and repose.  This picture sank into the wall as the writing had done.  
And then came out another;  the same man and woman driving together 
in a sleigh drawn by reindeer over fields of ice;  with all about 
them glaciers and snow, and great mountains veiled in wreaths of 
slowly moving mist.  The sleigh went at a rapid pace, and its 
occupants talked gaily to each other, so far as I could judge by 
their smiles and the movement of their lips.  But, what caused me 
much surprise was that they carried between them, and actually in 
their hands, a glowing flame, the fervor of which I felt reflected 
from the picture upon my own cheeks.  The ice around shone with 
its brightness.  The mists upon the snow mountains caught its gleam.  
Yet, strong as were its light and heat, neither the man nor the 
woman seemed to be burned or dazzled by it.  This picture, too, 
the beauty and brilliancy of which greatly impressed me, sank and 
disappeared as the former.
	
Next, I saw a terrible looking man clad in an enchanter's robe, 
standing alone upon an ice-crag.  In the air above him, poised like 
a dragonfly, was an evil spirit, having a head and face like that 
of a human being.  The rest of it resembled the tail of a comet, 
and seemed made of a green fire, which flickered in and out as though 
swayed by a wind.  And as I looked, suddenly, through an opening 
among the hills, I saw the sleigh pass, carrying the beautiful woman 
and her husband;  and in the same instant the enchanter also saw 
it, and his face contracted, and the evil spirit lowered itself 
and came between me and him.  Then this picture sank and vanished.
	
I next beheld the same cave in the mountains which I had before seen;  
and the beautiful couple together in it.  Then a shadow darkened 
the door of the cave;  and the enchanter was there, asking admittance;  
cheerfully they bade him enter, and, as he came forward with his 
snake-like eyes fixed on the fair woman, I understood that he wished 
to have her for his own, and was even then devising how to bear 
her away.  And the spirit in the air beside him seemed busy suggesting 
schemes to this end.  Then this picture melted and became confused, 
giving place for but a brief moment to another, in which I saw the 
enchanter carrying the woman away in his arms, she struggling and 
lamenting, her long bright hair streaming behind her.  This scene 
passed from the wall as though a wind had swept over it, and there 
rose up in its place a picture, which impressed me with a more vivid 
sense of reality than all the rest.
	
It represented a market place, in the midst of which was a pile 
of faggots and a stake, such as were used formerly for the burning 
of heretics and witches.  The market place, round which were rows 
of seats as though for a concourse of spectators, yet appeared quite 
deserted.  I saw only three living beings present,--the beautiful 
woman, the enchanter, and the evil spirit.  Nevertheless, I thought 
that the seats were really occupied by invisible tenants, for every 
now and then there seemed to be a stir in the atmosphere as of a 
great multitude; and I had, moreover, a strange sense of facing 
many witnesses.  The enchanter led the woman to the stake, fastened 
her there with iron chains, lit the faggots about her feet and 
withdrew to a short distance, where he stood with his arms folded, 
looking on as the flames rose about her.  I understood that she 
had refused his love, and that in his fury he had denounced her as 
a sorceress.  Then in the fire, above the pile, I saw the evil spirit 
poising itself like a fly, and rising and sinking and fluttering 
in the thick smoke.  While I wondered what this meant, the flames 
which had concealed the beautiful woman, parted in their midst, 
and disclosed a sight so horrible and unexpected as to thrill me 
from head to foot, and curdle my blood.  Chained to the stake there 
stood, not the fair woman I had seen there a moment before, but a 
hideous monster,--a woman still, but a woman with three heads, and 
three bodies linked in one.  Each of her long arms ended, not in 
a hand, but in a claw like that of a bird of rapine.  Her hair 
resembled the locks of the classic Medusa, and her faces were 
inexpressibly loathsome.  She seemed, with all her dreadful heads 
and limbs, to writhe in the flames and yet not to be consumed by them.  
She gathered them in to herself;  her claws caught them and drew 
them down;  her triple body appeared to suck the fire into itself, 
as though a blast drove it.  The sight appalled me.  I covered my 
face and dared look no more.
	
When at length I again turned my eyes upon the wall, the picture 
that had so terrified me was gone, and instead of it, I saw the 
enchanter flying through the world, pursued by the evil spirit and 
that dreadful woman.  Through all the world they seemed to go.  
The scenes changed with marvellous rapidity.  Now the picture glowed 
with the wealth and gorgeousness of the torrid zone;  now the 
ice-fields of the North rose into view;  anon a pine-forest;  then 
a wild seashore;  but always the same three flying figures;  always 
the horrible three-formed harpy pursuing the enchanter, and beside 
her the evil spirit with the dragonfly wings.
	
At last this succession of images ceased, and I beheld a desolate 
region, in the midst of which sat the woman with the enchanter beside 
her, his head reposing in her lap.  Either the sight of her must 
have become familiar to him and, so, less horrible, or she had 
subjugated him by some spell.  At all events, they were mated at 
last, and their offspring lay around them on the stony ground, or 
moved to and fro.  These were lions,--monsters with human faces, 
such as I had seen in the beginning of my dream.  Their jaws dripped 
blood;  they paced backwards and forwards, lashing their tails.  
Then too, this picture faded and sank into the wall as the others 
had done.  And through its melting outlines came out again the words 
I had first seen:  "This is the History of our World," only they 
seemed to me in some way changed, but how;  I cannot tell.  The 
horror of the whole thing was too strong upon me to let me dare 
look longer at the wall.  And I awoke, repeating to myself the 
question,  "How could one woman become three?"

--Hinton, Feb. 1877
 




IX.  The Banquet of the Gods 

	


I saw in my sleep a great table spread upon a beautiful mountain, 
the distant peaks of which were covered with snow, and brilliant 
with a bright light.  Around the table reclined, twelve persons, 
six male, six female, some of whom I recognised at once, the others 
afterwards.  Those whom I recognised at once were Zeus, Hera, Pallas 
Athena, Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis.  I knew them by the symbols 
they wore.  The table was covered with all kinds of fruit, of great 
size, including nuts, almonds, and olives, with flat cakes of bread, 
and cups of gold into which, before drinking, each divinity poured 
two sorts of liquid, one of which was wine, the other water.  As 
I was looking on, standing on a step a little below the top of the 
flight which led to the table, I was startled by seeing Hera suddenly 
fix her eyes on me and say, "What seest thou at the lower end of 
the table?"  And I looked and answered, "I see two vacant seats."  
Then she spoke again and said, "When you are able to eat of our 
food and to drink of our cup, you also shall sit and feast with us."  
Scarcely had she uttered these words, when Athena, who sat facing me, 
added, "When you are able to eat of our food and to drink of our cup, 
then you shall know as you are known."  And immediately Artemis, 
whom I knew by the moon upon her head;  continued, "When you are 
able to eat of our food and to drink of our cup, all things shall 
become pure to you, and ye shall be made virgins."
	
Then I said, "O Immortals, what is your food and your drink, and 
how does your banquet differ from ours, seeing that we also eat 
no flesh, and blood has no place in our repasts?"
	
Then one of the Gods, whom at the time I did not know, but have 
since recognised as Hermes, rose from the table, and coming to me 
put into my hands a branch of a fig tree bearing upon it ripe fruit, 
and said, "If you would be perfect, and able to know and to do all 
things, quit the heresy of Prometheus.  Let fire warm and comfort 
you externally:  it is heaven's gift.  But do not wrest it from its 
rightful purpose, as did that betrayer of your race, to fill the 
veins of humanity with its contagion, and to consume your interior 
being with its breath.  All of you are men of clay, as was the image 
which Prometheus made.  Ye are nourished with stolen fire, and it 
consumes you.  Of all the evil uses of heaven's good gifts, none 
is so evil as the internal use of fire.  For your hot foods and 
drinks have consumed and dried up the magnetic power of your nerves, 
sealed your senses, and cut short your lives.  Now, you neither 
see nor hear;  for the fire in your organs consumes your senses.  
Ye are all blind and deaf, creatures of clay.  We have sent you a 
book to read.  Practise its precepts, and your senses shall be opened."
	
Then, not yet recognising him, I said, "Tell me your name, Lord."  
At this he laughed and answered, "I have been about you from the 
beginning.  I am the white cloud on the noonday sky."  "Do you, then," 
I asked, "desire the whole world to abandon the use of fire in 
preparing food and drink?"
	
Instead of answering my question, he said, "We show you the excellent 
way.  Two places only are vacant at our table.  We have told you 
all that can be shown you on the level on which you stand.  But 
our perfect gifts, the fruits of the Tree of Life, are beyond your 
reach now.  We cannot give them to you until you are purified and 
have come up higher.  The conditions are God's;  the will is with you."
	
These last words seemed to be repeated from the sky overhead, and 
again from beneath my feet.  And at the instant I fell, as if shot 
down like a meteor from a vast height;  and with the swiftness and 
shock of the fall I awoke.
	
--Hinton, Sept. 1877 

-----------------
* The book referred to was a volume entitled Fruit and Bread, which 
had been sent anonymously on the previous morning.  The fig-tree, 
which both with the Hebrews and the Greeks was the type of intuitional 
perception, was an especial symbol of Hermes, called by the Hebrews 
Raphael.  The plural used by the seer included myself as the partner 
of her literary and other studies.  The term virgin in its mystical 
sense signifies a soul pure from admixture of matter.--(Ed.)
----------------------- 





X.  The Difficult Path

	


Having fallen asleep last night while in a state of great perplexity 
about the care and education of my daughter, I dreamt as follows.
	
I was walking with the child along the border of a high cliff, at 
the foot of which was the sea.  The path was exceedingly narrow, 
and on the inner side was flanked by a line of rocks and stones.  
The outer side was so close to the edge of the cliff that she was 
compelled to walk either before or behind me, or else on the stones.  
And, as it was unsafe to let go her hand, it was on the stones that 
she had to walk, much to her distress.  I was in male attire, and 
carried a staff in my hand.  She wore skirts and had no staff;  
and every moment she stumbled or her dress caught and was torn by 
some jutting crag or bramble.  In this way our progress was being 
continually interrupted and rendered almost impossible, when suddenly 
we came upon a sharp declivity leading to a steep path which wound 
down the side of the precipice to the beach below.  Looking down, 
I saw on the shore beneath the cliff a collection of fishermen's huts, 
and groups of men and women on the shingle, mending nets, hauling 
up boats, and sorting fish of various kinds.  In the midst of the 
little village stood a great crucifix of lead, so cast in a mould 
as to allow me from the elevated position I occupied behind it, 
to see that though in front it looked solid, it was in reality hollow.  
As I was noting this, a voice of some one close at hand suddenly 
addressed me;  and on turning my head I found standing before me 
a man in the garb of a fisherman, who evidently had just scaled 
the steep path leading from the beach.  He stretched out his hand 
to take the child, saying he bad come to fetch her, for that in 
the path I was following there was room only for one.  "Let her 
come to us," he added;  "she will do very well as a fisherman's 
daughter."  Being reluctant to part with her, and not perceiving 
then the significance of his garb and vocation, I objected that 
the calling was a dirty and unsavoury one, and would soil her hands 
and dress.  Whereupon the man became severe, and seemed to insist 
with a kind of authority upon my acceptance of his proposition.  
The child, too, was taken with him, and was moreover anxious to 
leave the rough and dangerous path;  and she accordingly went to 
him of her own will and, placing her hand in his, left me without 
any sign of regret, and I went on my way alone.  Then lifting my 
eyes to see whither my path led, I beheld it winding along the edge 
of the cliff to an apparently endless distance, until, as I gazed 
steadily on the extreme limit of my view, I saw the grey mist from 
the sea here and there break and roll up into great masses of 
slow-drifting cloud, in the intervals of which I caught the white 
gleam of sunlit snow.  And these intervals continually closed up 
to open again in fresh places higher up, disclosing peak upon peak 
of a range of mountains of enormous altitude.*

By a curious coincidence, the very morning after this dream, a friend, 
who knew of my perplexity, called to

----------
* Always the symbol of high mystical insight and spiritual attainment--
Biblically called "the Hill of the Lord" and "Mount of God. "  (Ed.)
----------
 
recommend a school in a certain convent as one suitable for my child.  
There were, however, insuperable objections to the scheme.

--Paris, Nov. 3, 1877
 




XI.  A Lion In the Way 

	


Owing to the many and great difficulties thrown in my way, I had 
been seriously considering the advisability of withdrawing, if only 
for a time, from my course of medical study, when I received the 
following dream, which determined me to persevere:--
	
I found myself on the same narrow, rugged, and precipitous path 
described in my last dream, and confronted by a lion.  Afraid to 
pass him I turned and fled.  On this the beast gave chase, when, 
finding escape by flight hopeless, I turned and boldly faced him.  
Whereupon the lion at once stopped and slunk to the side of the path, 
and suffered me to pass unmolested, though I was so close to him 
that I could not avoid touching him with my garments in passing.
					
--Paris, Nov. 15, 1877

------------
* The prognostic was fully justified by the event.--(Ed.)
------------- 





XII.  A Dream of Disembodiment

	


I dreamt that I was dead, and wanted to take form and appear to C. 
in order to converse with him.  And it was suggested by those about me--
spirits like myself I suppose--that I might materialise myself through 
the medium of some man whom they indicated to me.  Coming to the 
place where he was, I was directed to throw myself out forward towards 
him by an intense concentration of will;  which I accordingly tried 
to do, but without success, though the effort I made was enormous.  
I can only compare it to the attempt made by a person unable to 
swim, to fling himself off a platform into deep water.  Do all I 
would, I could not gather myself up for it;  and although encouraged 
and stimulated, and assured I had only to let myself go, my attempts 
were ineffectual.  Even when I had sufficiently collected and prepared 
myself in one part of my system, the other part failed me.
	
At length it was suggested to me that I should find it easier if 
I first took on me the form of the medium.  This I at length succeeded 
in doing, and, to my annoyance, so completely that I materialised 
myself into the shape not only of his features, but of his clothing 
also.  The effort requisite for this exhausted me to the utmost, 
so that I was unable to keep up the apparition for more than a few 
minutes, when I had no choice but to yield to the strain and let 
myself go again, only in the opposite way.  So I went out, and mounted 
like a sudden flame, and saw myself for a moment like a thin streak 
of white mist rising in the air;  while the comfort and relief I 
experienced by regaining my light spirit-condition, were indescribable.  
It was because I had, for want of skill, dematerialised myself without 
sufficient deliberation, that I had thus rapidly mounted in the air.
	
After an interval I dreamt that, wishing to see what A. would do 
in case I appeared to him after my death, I went to him as a spirit 
and called him by his name.  Upon hearing my voice he rose and went 
to the window and looked out uneasily.  On my going close to him 
and speaking in his ear, he was much disturbed, and ran his hand 
through his hair and rubbed his head in a puzzled and by no means 
pleased manner.  At the third attempt to attract his attention he 
rushed to the door, and, calling for a glass, poured out some wine, 
which he drank.  On seeing this, and finding him inaccessible, 
I desisted, thinking it must often happen to the departed to be 
distressed by the inability or unwillingness of those they love to 
receive and recognise them.

--Paris, Jan. 1878



XIII.  The Perfect Way with Animals

	


I saw in my sleep a cart-horse who, coming to me, conversed with 
me in what seemed a perfectly simple and natural manner, for it 
caused me no surprise that he should speak.  And this is what he said:--
	
"Kindness to animals of the gentler orders is the very foundation 
of civilisation.  For it is the cruelty and harshness of men towards 
the animals under their protection which is the cause of the present 
low standard of humanity itself.  Brutal usage creates brutes;  
and the ranks of mankind are constantly recruited from spirits 
already hardened and depraved by a long course of ill-treatment.  
Nothing developes the spirit so much as sympathy.  Nothing cultivates, 
refines, and aids it in its progress towards perfection so much as 
kind and gentle treatment.  On the contrary, the brutal usage and 
want of sympathy with which we meet at the hands of men, stunt our 
development and reverse all the currents of a our nature.  We grow 
coarse with coarseness, vile with reviling, and brutal with the 
brutality of those who surround us.  And when we pass out of this 
stage we enter on the next depraved and hardened, and with the bent 
of our dispositions such that we are ready by our nature to do in 
our turn that which has been done to us.  The greater number of us, 
indeed, know no other or better way.  For the spirit learns by 
experience and imitation, and inclines necessarily to do those 
things which it has been in the habit of seeing done.  Humanity 
will never become perfected until this doctrine is understood and 
received and made the rule of conduct."

--Paris, Oct. 28, 1879





XIV.  The Laboratory Underground
	



I dreamed that I found myself underground in a vault artificially 
lighted.  Tables were ranged along the walls of the vault, and upon 
these tables were bound down the living bodies of half-dissected 
and mutilated animals.  Scientific experts were busy at work on 
their victims with scalpel, hot iron and forceps.  But, as I looked 
at the creatures lying bound before them, they no longer appeared 
to be mere rabbits, or hounds, for in each I saw a human shape, 
the shape of a man, with limbs and lineaments resembling those of 
their torturers, hidden within the outward form.  And when they 
led into the place an old worn-out horse, crippled with age and 
long toil in the service of man, and bound him down, and lacerated 
his flesh with their knives, I saw the human form within him stir 
and writhe as though it were an unborn babe moving in its mother's 
womb.  And I cried aloud--"Wretches! you are tormenting an unborn man!"  
But they heard not, nor could they see what I saw.  Then they brought 
in a white rabbit, and thrust its eyes through with heated irons.  
And as I gazed, the rabbit seemed to me like a tiny infant, with 
human face, and hands which stretched themselves towards me in 
appeal, and lips which sought to cry for help in human accents.  
And I could bear no more, but broke forth into a bitter rain of 
tears, exclaiming--"O blind! blind! not to see that you torture a 
child, the youngest of your own flesh and blood!"
	
And with that I woke, sobbing vehemently.

--Paris, Feb. 2, 1880
 




XV.  The Old Young Man




I dreamed that I was in Rome with C., and a friend of his called 
on us there, and asked leave to introduce to us a young man, a student 
of art, whose history and condition were singular.  They came together 
in the evening.  In the room where we sat was a kind of telephonic 
tube, through which, at intervals, a voice spoke to me.  When the 
young man entered, these words were spoken in my ear through the tube:--
	
"You have made a good many diagnoses lately of cases of physical 
disease;  here is a curious and interesting type of spiritual pathology, 
the like of which is rarely met with.   Question this young man."
	
Accordingly I did so, and drew from him that about a year ago he 
had been seriously ill of Roman fever; but as he hesitated, and 
seemed unwilling to speak on the subject, I questioned the friend.  
From him I learnt that the young man had formerly been a very 
proficient pupil in one of the best-known studios in Rome, but that 
a year ago he had suffered from a most terrible attack of malaria, 
in consequence of his remaining in Rome to work after others had 
found it necessary to go into the country, and that the malady had 
so affected the nervous system that since his recovery he had been 
wholly unlike his former self.  His great aptitude for artistic work, 
from which so much had been expected, seemed to have entirely left him;  
he was no longer master of his pencil;  his former faculty and 
promise of excellence had vanished.  The physician who had attended 
him during his illness affirmed that all this was readily accounted 
for by the assumption that the malaria had affected the cerebral 
centres, and in particular, the nerve-cells of the memory;  that 
such consequences of severe continuous fever were by no means uncommon, 
and might last for an indefinite period.  Meanwhile the young man 
was now, by slow and painful application, doing his utmost to recover 
his lost power and skill.  Naturally, the subject was distasteful 
to him, and he shrank from discussing it. Here the voice again spoke 
to me through the tube, telling me to observe the young man, and 
especially his face.  On this I scanned his countenance with attention, 
and remarked that it wore a singularly odd look,--the look of a 
man advanced in years and experience.  But that I surmised to be 
a not unusual effect of severe fever.
	
"How old do you suppose the patient to be?" asked the interrogative voice.
	
"About twenty years old, I suppose," said I.
	
"He is a year old," rejoined the voice.
	
"A year!  How can that be?"
	
"If you will not allow that he is only a year old, then you must admit 
that he is sixty-five, for he is certainly either one or the other."
	
This enigma so perplexed me, that I begged my invisible informant 
for a solution of the difficulty, which was at once vouchsafed in 
the following terms:--
	
"Here is the history of your patient.  The youth who was the proficient 
and gifted student, who astonished his masters, and gave such brilliant 
indications of future greatness, is dead.  The malaria killed him.  
But he had a father, who, while alive, had loved his son as the 
apple of his eye, and whose whole being and desire centred in the boy.  
This father died some six years ago, about the age of sixty.  After 
his death his devotion to the youth continued, and as a "spirit," 
he followed him everywhere, never quitting his side.  So entirely 
was he absorbed in the lad and in his career, that he made no advance 
in his own spiritual life, nor, indeed, was he fully aware of the 
fact that he had himself quitted the earthly plane.  For there are 
souls which, having been obtuse and dull in their apprehension of 
spiritual things during their existence in the flesh, and having 
neither hopes nor aims beyond the body, are very slow to realise 
the fact of their dissolution, and remain, therefore, chained to 
the earth by earthly affections and interests, haunting the places 
or persons they have most affected.  But the young artist was not of 
this order.  Idealist and genius, he was already highly spiritualised 
and vitalised even upon earth, and when death rent the bond between 
him and his body, he passed at once from the atmosphere of carnal 
things into a loftier sphere. But at the moment of his death, the 
phantom father was watching beside the son's sick-bed, and filled 
with agony at beholding the wreck of all the brilliant hopes he 
had cherished for the boy, thought only of preserving the physical 
life of that dear body, since the death of the outward form was 
still for him the death of all he had loved.  He would cling to it, 
preserve it, re-animate it at any cost.  The spirit had quitted it;  
it lay before him a corpse.  What, then, did the father do?  With 
a supreme effort of desire, ineffectual indeed to recall the departed 
ghost, but potent in its reaction upon himself, he projected his 
own vitality into his son's dead body, re-animated it with his own 
soul, and thus effected the resuscitation for which he had so 
ardently longed. So the body you now behold is, indeed, the son's 
body, but the soul which animates it is that of the father.  And 
it is a year since this event occurred.  Such is the real solution 
of the problem, whose natural effects the physician attributes to 
the result of disease.  The spirit which now tenants this young man's 
form had no knowledge of art when he was so strangely reborn into 
the world, beyond the mere rudiments of drawing which he had learned 
while watching his son at work during the previous six years.  What, 
therefore, seems to the physician to be a painful recovery of 
previous aptitude, is, in fact, the imperfect endeavour of a novice 
entering a new and unsuitable career.
	
"For the father the experience is by no means an unprofitable one.  
He would certainly, sooner or later, have resumed existence upon 
earth in the flesh, and it is as well that his return should be 
under the actual circumstances.  The study of art upon which he 
has thus entered is likely to prove to him an excellent means of 
spiritual education.  By means of it his soul may ascend as it has 
never yet done;  while the habits of the body he now possesses, 
trained as it is to refined and gentle modes of life, may do much 
to accomplish the purgation and redemption of its new tenant.  
It is far better for the father that this strange event should 
have occurred, than that he should have remained an earth-bound 
phantom, unable to realise his own position, or to rise above the 
affection which chained him to merely worldly things."

--Paris, Feb. 21, 1880
 




XVI.  The Metempsychosis

	


I was visited last night in my sleep by one whom I presently 
recognised as the famous Adept and Mystic of the first century of 
our era, Apollonius of Tyana, called the " Pagan Christ."  He was 
clad in a grey linen robe with a hood, like that of a monk, and 
had a smooth, beardless face, and seemed to be between forty and 
fifty years of age.  He made himself known to me by asking if I 
had heard of his lion.*  He commenced by speaking of Metempsychosis, 
concerning which he informed

---------
* This was a tame captive lion, in whom Apollonius is said to have 
recognised the soul of the Egyptian King Amasis, who had lived 500 
years previously.  The lion burst into tears at the recognition, 
and showed much misery.  (Author's Note.)
----------
 
me as follows:--"There are two streams or currents, an upward and 
a downward one, by which souls are continually passing and repassing 
as on a ladder.  The carnivorous animals are souls undergoing penance 
by being imprisoned for a time in such forms on account of their 
misdeeds.  Have you not heard the story of my lion?"  I said yes, 
but that I did not understand it, because I thought it impossible 
for a human soul to suffer the degradation of returning into the 
body of a lower creature after once attaining humanity.  At this 
he laughed out, and said that the real degradation was not in the 
penance but in the sin.  "It is not by the penance, but by incurring 
the need of the penance, that the soul is degraded.  The man who 
sullies his humanity by cruelty or lust, is already degraded thereby 
below humanity;  and the form which his soul afterwards assumes 
is the mere natural consequence of that degradation.  He may again 
recover humanity, but only by means of passing through another 
form than that of the carnivora.  When you were told * that certain 
creatures were redeemable or not redeemable, the meaning was this:  
They who are redeemable may, on leaving their present form, return 
directly into humanity.  Their penance is accomplished in that form, 
and in it, therefore, they are redeemed.  But they who are not 
redeemable, are they whose sin has been too deep or too ingrained 
to suffer them to return until they have passed through other lower 
forms.  They are not redeemable therein, but will be on ascending 
again.  Others, altogether vile and past redemption, sink continually 
lower and lower down the stream, until at length they burn out.  
They shall neither be redeemed in the form they now occupy, nor in 
any other."

--Paris, May 11, 1880

----------
* The reference is to an instruction received by her four years 
previously, but not in sleep, and not from Apollonius, though from 
a source no less transcendental.  (Ed.)
 
*** Remembering, on being told this dream, that "Eliphas Levi," 
in his Haute Magic, had described an interview with the phantom 
of Apollonius, which he had evoked, I referred to the book, and 
found that he also saw him with a smooth-shaven face, but wearing 
a shroud (linceul).  (Ed.)

 



XVII.  The Three Kings

	


The time was drawing towards dawn in a wild and desolate region.  
And I stood with my genius at the foot of a mountain the summit 
of which was hidden in mist.  At a few paces from me stood three 
persons, clad in splendid robes and wearing crowns on their heads.  
Each personage carried a casket and a key:  the three caskets 
differed from one another, but the keys were all alike.  And my 
genius said to me, "These are the three kings of the East, and 
they journey hither over the river that is dried up, to go up into 
the mountain of Sion and rebuild the Temple of the Lord God."  
Then I looked more closely at the three royalties, and I saw that 
the one who stood nearest to me on the left hand was a man, and 
the color of his skin was dark like that of an Indian.  And the 
second was in form like a woman, and her complexion was fair:  and 
the third had the wings of an Angel, and carried a staff of gold.  
And I heard them say one to another, "Brother, what hast thou in 
thy casket?" And the first answered, " I am the Stonelayer, and I 
carry the implements of my craft;  also a bundle of myrrh for thee 
and for me."  And the king who bore the aspect of a woman, answered,  
"I am the Carpenter, and I bear the instruments of my craft;  also 
a box of frankincense for thee and for me."  And the Angel-king 
answered,  "I am the Measurer, and I carry the secrets of the living 
God, and the rod of gold to measure your work withal."  Then the 
first said,  "Therefore let us go up into the hill of the Lord and 
build the walls of Jerusalem.  And they turned to ascend the mountain.  
But they had not taken the first step when the king, whose name 
was Stonelayer, said to him who was called the Carpenter,  "Give 
me first the implements of thy craft, and the plan of thy building, 
that I may know after what sort thou buildest, and may fashion 
thereto my masonry."  And the other asked him,  "What buildest thou, 
brother?" And he answered,  "I build the Outer Court."  Then the 
Carpenter unlocked his casket and gave him a scroll written over 
in silver, and a crystal rule, and a carpenter's plane and a saw.  
And the other took them and put them into his casket.  Then the 
Carpenter said to the Stonelayer,  "Brother, give me also the plan 
of thy building, and the tools of thy craft.  For I build the Inner 
Place, and must needs fit my designing to thy foundation."  But 
the other answered,  "Nay, my brother, for I have promised the 
laborers.  Build thou alone.  It is enough that I know thy secrets;  
ask not mine of me."  And the Carpenter answered,  "How then shall 
the Temple of the Lord be builded?  Are we not of three Ages, and 
is the temple yet perfected?"  Then the Angel spoke, and said to 
the Stonelayer, "Fear not, brother:  freely hast thou received;  
freely give.  For except thine elder brother had been first a 
Stonelayer, he could not now be a Carpenter.  Art thou not of 
Solomon, and he of Christ?  Therefore he hath already handled thy 
tools, and is of thy craft.  And I also, the Measurer, I know the 
work of both.  But now is that time when the end cometh, and that 
which hath been spoken in the ear in closets, the same shall be 
proclaimed on the housetops."  Then the first king unlocked his 
casket, and gave to the Carpenter a scroll written in red, and a 
compass and a trowel.  But the Carpenter answered him:  "It is enough.  
I have seen, and I remember.  For this is the writing King Solomon 
gave into my hands when I also was a Stonelayer, and when thou wert 
of the company of them that labor.  For I also am thy Brother, and 
that thou knowest I know also."   Then the third king, the Angel, 
spoke again and said,  "Now is the knowledge perfected and the bond 
fulfilled.  For neither can the Stonelayer build alone, nor the 
Carpenter construct apart.  Therefore, until this day, is the Temple 
of the Lord unbuilt.  But now is the time come, and Salem shall 
have her habitation on the Hill of the Lord."
	
And there came down a mist from the mountain, and out of the mist 
a star.  And my Genius said,  "Thou shalt yet see more on this wise."  
But I saw then only the mist, which filled the valley, and moistened 
my hair and my dress;  and so I awoke.

--London, April 30, 1882

----------
** For the full comprehension of the above dream, it is necessary 
to be profoundly versed at once in the esoteric signification of 
the Scriptures and in the mysteries of Freemasonry.  It was the 
dreamer's great regret that she neither knew, nor could know, the 
latter, women being excluded from initiation.  (Ed.)
 




XVIII.  The Armed Goddess

	


I dreamed that I sat reading in my study, with books lying about 
all round me.  Suddenly a voice, marvellously clear and silvery, 
called me by name.  Starting up and turning, I saw behind me a long 
vista of white marble columns, Greek in architecture, flanking on 
either side a gallery of white marble.  At the end of this gallery 
stood a shape of exceeding brilliancy, the shape of a woman above 
mortal height, clad from head to foot in shining mail armour.  In 
her right hand was a spear, on her left arm a shield.  Her brow 
was hidden by a helmet, and the aspect of her face was stern,--
severe even, I thought.  I approached her, and as I went, my body 
was lifted up from the earth, and I was aware of that strange 
sensation of floating above the surface of the ground, which is so 
common with me in sleep that at times I can scarce persuade myself 
after waking that it has not been a real experience.  When I alighted 
at the end of the long gallery before the armed woman, she said to me:
	
"Take off the night-dress thou wearest."
	
I looked at my attire and was about to answer-- "This is not a 
night-dress," when she added, as though perceiving my thought:--
	
"The woman's garb is a night-dress;  it is a garment made to sleep in.  
The man's garb is the dress for the day.  Look eastward!"
	
I raised my eyes and, behind the mail-clad shape, I saw the dawn 
breaking, blood-red, and with great clouds like pillars of smoke 
rolling up on either side of the place where the sun was about to rise.  
But as yet the sun was not visible.  And as I looked, she cried aloud, 
and her voice rang through the air like the clash of steel:--
	
"Listen!"
	
And she struck her spear on the marble pavement.  At the same moment 
there came from afar off, a confused sound of battle.  Cries, and 
human voices in conflict, and the stir as of a vast multitude, the 
distant clang of arms and a noise of the galloping of many horses 
rushing furiously over the ground.  And then, sudden silence.
	
Again she smote the pavement, and again the sounds arose, nearer 
now, and more tumultuous.  Once more they ceased, and a third time 
she struck the marble with her spear.   Then the noises arose all 
about and around the very spot where we stood, and the clang of 
the arms was so close that it shook and thrilled the very columns 
beside me.  And the neighing and snorting of horses, and the thud 
of their ponderous hoofs flying over the earth made, as it were, 
a wind in my ears, so that it seemed as though a furious battle 
were raging all around us.  But I could see nothing.  Only the 
sounds increased, and became so violent that they awoke me, and 
even after waking I still seemed to catch the commotion of them 
in the air. *

--Paris, February 15, 1883.

----------
* This dream was shortly followed by Mrs Kingsford's antivivisection 
expedition to Switzerland, the fierce conflict of which amply 
fulfilled any predictive significance it may have had.
----------- 
 




XIX.  The Game of Cards:  A Parable

	


I dreamed I was playing at cards with three persons, the two opposed 
to me being a man and a woman with hoods pulled over their heads, 
and cloaks covering their persons.  I did not particularly observe 
them.  My partner was an old man without hood or cloak, and there 
was about him this peculiarity, that he did not from one minute 
to another appear to remain the same.  Sometimes he looked like a 
very young man, the features not appearing to change in order to 
produce this effect, but an aspect of youth and even of mirth coming 
into the face as though the features were lighted up from within.  
Behind me stood a personage whom I could not see, for his hand and 
arm only appeared, handing me a pack of cards.  So far as I discerned, 
it was a man's figure, habited in black.  Shortly after the dream 
began, my partner addressed me, saying,
	
"Do you play by luck or by skill?"
	
I answered:  "I play by luck chiefly;  I don't know how to play 
by skill.  But I have generally been lucky."  In fact, I had already, 
lying by me, several "tricks" I had taken.  He answered me:--
	
"To play by luck is to trust to without;  to play by skill is to 
trust to within.  In this game, Within goes further than Without."
	
"What are trumps?" I asked.
	
"Diamonds are trumps," he answered.
	
I looked at the cards in my hand and said to him:--"I have more 
clubs than anything else." 
	
At this he laughed, and seemed all at once quite a youth.  "Clubs 
are strong cards, after all," he said.  "Don't despise the black 
suits.  I have known some of the best games ever played won by 
players holding more clubs than you have."
	
I examined the cards and found something very odd about them.  There 
were the four suits, diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades.  But the 
picture cards in my hand seemed different altogether from any I 
had ever seen before.  One was queen of Clubs, and her face altered 
as I looked at it.  First it was dark,--almost dusky,--with the 
imperial crown on the head;  then it seemed quite fair, the crown 
changing to a smaller one of English aspect, and the dress also 
transforming itself.  There was a queen of Hearts, too, in an antique 
peasant's gown, with brown hair, and presently this melted into a 
suit of armor which shone as if reflecting firelight in its burnished 
scales.  The other cards seemed alive likewise, even the ordinary 
ones, just like the court-cards.  There seemed to be pictures moving 
inside the emblems on their faces.  The clubs in my hand ran into 
higher figures than the spades;  these came next in number, and 
diamonds next.  I had no picture-cards of diamonds, but I had the Ace.  
And this was so bright I could not look at it.  Except the two queens 
of Clubs and Hearts I think I had no picture-cards in my hand, and 
very few red cards of any kind.  There were high figures in the spades.  
It was the personage behind my chair who dealt the cards always.  
I said to my partner:--"It is difficult to play at all, whether 
by luck or by skill, for I get such a bad hand dealt me each time."
	
"That is your fault," he said.  "Play your best with what you have, 
and next time you will get better cards." 
	
"How can that be?" I asked. 
	
"Because after each game, the `tricks' you take are added to the 
bottom of the pack which the dealer holds, and you get the `honors' 
you have taken up from the table.  Play well and take all you can.  
But you must put more head into it.  You trust too much to fortune.  
Don't blame the dealer;  he can't see."
	
"I shall lose this game," I said presently, for the two persons 
playing against us seemed to be taking up all the cards quickly, 
and the "lead" never came to my turn.
	
"It is because you don't count your points before putting down a card," 
my partner said.  "If they play high numbers, you must play higher."
	
"But they have all the trumps," I said.
	
"No," he answered, "you have the highest trump of all in your own 
hand.  It is the first and the last.  You may take every card they 
have with that, for it is the chief of the whole series.  But you 
have spades too, and high ones."  (He seemed to know what I had.)
	
"Diamonds are better than spades," I answered.  "And nearly all 
my cards are black ones.  Besides, I can't count, it wants so much 
thinking.  Can't you come over here and play for me?"
	
He shook his head, and I thought that again he laughed."  No," he 
replied,  "that is against the law of the game.  You must play for 
yourself.  Think it out."
	
He uttered these words very emphatically and with so strange an 
intonation that they dissipated the rest of the dream, and I remember 
no more of it.  But I did "think it out;"  and I found it was a parable;  
of Karma.

--Atcham, Dec. 7, 1883
  




XX. The Panic-Struck Pack-Horse

	


Out of a veil of palpitating mist there arose before me in my sleep 
the image of a colossal and precipitous cliff;  standing sheer up 
against a sky of cloud and sea-mist, the tops of the granite peaks 
being merged and hidden in the vapor.  At the foot of the precipice 
beat a wild sea, tossing and flecked with foam;  and out of the 
flying spray rose sharp splinters of granite, standing like spearheads 
about the base of the solid rock.  As I looked, something stirred 
far off in the distance, like a fly crawling over the smooth crag.  
Fixing my gaze upon it I became aware that there was at a great 
height above the sea, midway between sky and water, a narrow 
unprotected footpath winding up and down irregularly along the side 
of the mighty cliff;--a slender, sloping path, horrible to look at, 
like a rope or a thread stretched mid-air, hanging between heaven 
and the hungry foam.  One by one, came towards me along this awful 
path a procession of horses, drawing tall narrow carts filled with 
bales of merchandise.  The horses moved along the edge of the crag 
as though they clung to it, their bodies aslant towards the wall 
of granite on their right, their legs moving with the precision of 
creatures feeling and grasping every step.  Like deer they moved,--
not like horses, and as they advanced, the carts they drew swayed 
behind them, and I thought every jolt would hurl them over the 
precipice.  Fascinated I watched,--I could not choose but watch.  
At length came a grey horse, not drawing a cart, but carrying 
something on his back,--on a pack-saddle apparently.  Like the 
rest he came on stealthily, sniffing every inch of the terrible way, 
until, just at the worst and giddiest point he paused, hesitated, 
and seemed about to turn.---I saw him back himself in a crouching 
attitude against the wall of rock behind him, lowering his haunches, 
and rearing his head in a strange manner.  The idea flashed on me 
that he would certainly turn, and then--what could happen?  More 
horses were advancing, and two beasts could not possibly pass each 
other on that narrow ledge!  But I was totally unprepared for the 
ghastly thing that actually did happen.  The miserable horse had 
been seized with the awful mountain-madness that sometimes overtakes 
men on stupendous heights,--the madness of suicide.  With a frightful 
scream, that sounded partly like a cry of supreme desperation, partly 
like one of furious and frenzied joy, the horse reared himself to 
his full height on the horrible ledge, shook his head wildly, and--
leaped with a frantic spring into the air, sheer over the precipice, 
and into the foam beneath.  His eyes glared as he shot into the void, 
a great dark living mass against the white mist.  Was he speared 
on those terrible shafts of rock below, or was his life dashed out 
in horrible crimson splashes against the cliffside?  Or did he sink 
into the reeling swirl of the foaming waters, and die more mercifully 
in their steel-dark depths?  I could not see.  I saw only the flying 
form dart through the mist like an arrow from a bow.  I heard only 
the appalling cry, like nothing earthly ever heard before;  and I 
woke in a panic, with hands tightly clasped, and my body damp with 
moisture.  It was but a dream--this awful picture;  it was gone 
as an image from a mirror, and I was awake, and gazing only upon 
blank darkness.

--Atcham, Sept. 15, 1884

 



XXI. The Haunted Inn

	


I seemed in my vision to be on a long and wearisome journey, and to 
have arrived at an Inn, in which I was offered shelter and rest.  The 
apartment given me consisted of a bedroom and parlour, communicating, 
and furnished in an antique manner, everything in the rooms appearing 
to be worm-eaten, dusty and out of date.  The walls were bare and 
dingy;  there was not a picture or an ornament in the apartment.  
An extremely dim light prevailed in the scene;  indeed, I do not 
clearly remember, whether, with the exception of the fire and a 
nightlamp, the rooms were illumined at all.  I seated myself in a 
chair, by the hearth;  it was late, and I thought only of rest.  
But, presently, I became aware of strange things going on about me.  
On a table in a corner lay some papers and a pencil.  With a feeling 
of indescribable horror I saw this pencil assume an erect position 
and begin of itself to write on the paper, precisely as though an 
invisible hand held and guided it.  At the same time, small detonations 
sounded in different parts of the room;  tiny bright sparks appeared, 
burst, and immediately expired in smoke.  The pencil having ceased 
to write, laid itself gently down, and taking the paper in my hand 
I found on it a quantity of writing which at first appeared to me 
to be in cipher, but I presently perceived that the words composing 
it were written backwards, from right to left, exactly as one sees 
writing reflected on a looking glass.  What was written made a 
considerable impression on me at the time, but I cannot now recall it.  
I know, however, that the dominant feeling I experienced was one 
of horror.
	
I called the owners of the inn and related to them what had taken 
place.  They received my statement with perfect equanimity, and 
told me that in their house this was the normal state of things, 
of which, in fact, they were extremely proud;  and they ended by 
congratulating me as a visitor much favored by the invisible agencies 
of the place.
	
"We call them our Lights," they said.
	
"It is true," I observed, "that I saw lights in the air about the 
room, but they went out instantaneously, and left only smoke behind 
them.  And why do they write backwards?  Who are They?"
	
As I asked this last question, the pencil on the table rose again, 
and wrote thus on the paper:--
	
".ksatonoD"
	
Again horror seized on me, and the air becoming full of smoke I 
found it impossible to breathe.  "Let me out!" I cried, "I am stifled 
here,--the air is full of smoke!"
	
"Outside," the people of the house answered, "you will lose your way;  
it is quite dark, and we have no other rooms to let.  And, besides, 
it is the same in all the other apartments of the inn."
	
"But the place is haunted!" I cried; and I pushed past them, and 
burst out of the house.
	
Before the doorway stood a tall veiled figure, like translucent silver.  
A sense of reverence overcame me.  The night was balmy, and bright 
almost as day with resplendent starlight.  The stars seemed to lean 
out of heaven;  they looked down on me like living eyes, full of a 
strange immeasurable sympathy.  I crossed the threshold, and stood 
in the open plain, breathing with rapture and relief the pure warm 
air of that delicious night.  How restful, calm, and glorious was 
the dark landscape, outlined in purple against the luminous sky!  
And what a consciousness of vastness and immensity above and around me!  
"Where am I?" I cried.  The silver figure stood beside me, and lifted 
its veil.  It was Pallas Athena.
	
"Under the Stars of the East," she answered me, "the true eternal 
Lights of the World."
	
After I was awake, a text in the Gospels was vividly brought to my 
mind:--"There was no room for then in the Inn."  What is this Inn, 
I wondered, all the rooms of which are haunted, and in which the 
Christ cannot be born?  And this open country under the eastern 
night,--is it not the same in which they were "abiding," to whom 
that Birth was first angelically announced?

--Atcham, Nov. 5, 1885

----------
** The solution of the enigma was afterwards recognised in an 
instruction, also imparted in sleep, in which it was said, "If 
Occultism were all, and held the key of heaven, there would be no 
need of Christ."  (Ed.)





XXII.  An Eastern Apologue

	


The following was read by me during sleep, in an old book printed 
in archaic type.  As with many other things similarly read by me, 
I do not know whether it is to be found in any book:-- 

"After Buddha had been ten years in retirement, certain sages sent 
their disciples to him, asking him,--'What dost thou claim to be, Gotama?'
	
"Buddha answered them, 'I claim to be nothing.'
	
"Ten years afterwards they sent again to him, asking the same question, 
and again Buddha answered:--'I claim to be nothing.'
	
"Then after yet another ten years had passed, they sent a third 
time, asking, 'What dost thou claim to be, Gotama?'
	
"And Buddha replied, 'I claim to be the utterance of the most high God.'
	
"Then they said to him:  'How is this, that hitherto thou hast 
proclaimed thyself to be nothing, and now thou declarest thyself 
to be the very utterance of God?'
	
"Buddha answered:  `Either I am nothing, or I am the very utterance 
of God, for between these two all is silence."'

--Atcham, March 5, 1885





XXIII.  A Haunted House Indeed!

	


I dreamt that during a tour on the Continent with my friend C. we 
stayed in a town wherein there was an ancient house of horrible 
reputation, concerning which we received the following account.  
At the top of the house was a suite of rooms, from which no one 
who entered at night ever again emerged.  No corpse was ever found;  
but it was said by some that the victims were absorbed bodily by 
the walls;  by others that there were in the rooms a number of 
pictures in frames, one frame, however, containing a blank canvas, 
which had the dreadful power, first, of fascinating the beholder, 
and next of drawing him towards it, so that he was compelled to 
approach and gaze at it.  Then, by the same hideous enchantment, 
he was forced to touch it, and the touch was fatal.  For the canvas 
seized him as a devil-fish seizes its prey, and sucked him in, so 
that he perished without leaving a trace of himself, or of the 
manner of his death.  The legend said further that if any person 
could succeed in passing a night in these rooms and in resisting 
their deadly influence, the spell would for ever be broken, and 
no one would thenceforth be sacrificed.
	
Hearing all this, and being somewhat of the knight-errant order, 
C. and I determined to face the danger, and, if possible, deliver 
the town from the enchantment.  We were assured that the attempt 
would be vain, for that it had already been many times made, and 
the Devils of the place were always triumphant.  They had the power, 
we were told, of hallucinating the senses of their victims;  we 
should be subjected to some illusion, and be fatally deceived.  
Nevertheless, we were resolved to try what we could do, and in order 
to acquaint ourselves with the scene of the ordeal, we visited the 
place in the daytime.  It was a gloomy-looking building, consisting 
of several vast rooms, filled with lumber of old furniture, worm-eaten 
and decaying;  scaffoldings, which seemed to have been erected for the 
sake of making repairs and then left;  the windows were curtainless, 
the floors bare, and rats ran hither and thither among the rubbish 
accumulated in the corners.  Nothing could possibly look more desolate 
and gruesome.  We saw no pictures;  but as we did not explore every 
part of the rooms, they may have been there without our seeing them.
	
We were further informed by the people of the town that in order 
to visit the rooms at night it was necessary to wear a special costume, 
and that without it we should have no chance whatever of issuing 
from them alive.  This costume was of black and white, and each 
of us was to carry a black stave.  So we put on this attire,--which 
somewhat resembled the garb of an ecclesiastical order,--and when 
the appointed time came, repaired to the haunted house, where, 
after toiling up the great staircase in the darkness, we reached 
the door of the haunted apartments to find it closed.  But light 
was plainly visible beneath it, and within was the sound of voices.  
This greatly surprised us;  but after a short conference we knocked.  
The door was presently opened by a servant, dressed as a modern 
indoor footman usually is, who civilly asked us to walk in.  On 
entering we found the place altogether different from what we expected 
to find, and had found on our daylight visit.  It was brightly lighted, 
had decorated walls, pretty ornaments, carpets, and every kind of 
modern garnishment, and, in short, bore all the appearance of an 
ordinary well-appointed private "flat."  While we stood in the corridor, 
astonished, a gentleman in evening dress advanced towards us from 
one of the reception rooms.  As he looked interrogatively at us, 
we thought it best to explain the intrusion, adding that we presumed 
we had either entered the wrong house, or stopped at the wrong apartment. 
	
He laughed pleasantly at our tale, and said, "I don't know anything 
about haunted rooms, and, in fact, don't believe in anything of the 
kind.  As for these rooms, they have for a long time been let for 
two or three nights every week to our Society for the purpose of 
social reunion.  We are members of a musical and literary association, 
and are in the habit of holding conversaziones in these rooms on 
certain evenings, during which we entertain ourselves with dancing, 
singing, charades, and literary gossip.  The rooms are spacious and 
lofty, and exactly adapted to our requirements.  As you are here, 
I may say, in the name of the rest of the members, that we shall 
be happy if you will join us."  At this I glanced at our dresses 
in some confusion, which being observed by the gentleman, he hastened 
to say:  "You need be under no anxiety about your appearance, for 
this is a costume night, and the greater number of our guests are 
in travesty."  As he spoke he threw open the door of a large 
drawing-room and invited us in. On entering we found a company of 
men and women, well-dressed, some in ordinary evening attire and 
some costumed.  The room was brilliantly lighted and beautifully 
furnished and decorated.  At one end was a grand piano, round which 
several persons were grouped;  others were seated on ottomans taking 
tea or coffee;  and others strolled about, talking.  Our host, who 
appeared to be master of the ceremonies, introduced us to several 
persons, and we soon became deeply interested in a conversation 
on literary subjects.  So the evening wore on pleasantly, but I 
never ceased to wonder how we could have mistaken the house or the 
staircase after the precaution we had taken of visiting it in the 
daytime in order to avoid the possibility of error.
	
Presently, being tired of conversation, I wandered away from the 
group with which C. was still engaged, to look at the beautiful 
decorations of the great salon, the walls of which were covered 
with artistic designs in fresco.  Between each couple of panels, 
the whole length of the salon, was a beautiful painting, representing 
a landscape or a sea-piece.  I passed from one to the other, admiring 
each, till I had reached the extreme end, and was far away from 
the rest of the company, where the lights were not so many or so 
bright as in the centre.  The last fresco in the series then caught 
my attention.  At first it appeared to me to be unfinished;  and 
then I observed that there was upon its background no picture at all, 
but only a background of merging tints which seemed to change, and 
to be now sky, now sea, now green grass.  This empty picture had, 
moreover, an odd metallic coloring which fascinated me;  and saying 
to myself  "Is there really any painting on it?" I mechanically 
put out my hand and touched it.  On this I was instantly seized 
by a frightful sensation, a shock that ran from the tips of my 
fingers to my brain, and steeped my whole being.  Simultaneously 
I was aware of an overwhelming sense of sucking and dragging, which, 
from my hand and arm, and, as it were, through them, seemed to 
possess and envelop my whole person.  Face, hair, eyes, bosom, limbs, 
every portion of my body was locked in an awful embrace which, like 
the vortex of a whirlpool, drew me irresistibly towards the picture.  
I felt the hideous impulse clinging over me and sucking me forwards 
into the wall.  I strove in vain to resist it.  My efforts were 
more futile than the flutter of gossamer wings.  And then there 
rushed upon my mind the consciousness that all we had been told 
about the haunted rooms was true;  that a strong delusion had been 
cast over us;  that all this brilliant throng of modern ladies and 
gentlemen were fiends masquerading, prepared beforehand for our coming;  
that all the beauty and splendor of our surroundings were mere glamor;  
and that in reality the rooms were those we had seen in the daytime, 
filled with lumber and rot and vermin.  As I realised all this, 
and was thrilled with the certainty of it, a sudden access of strength 
came to me, and I was impelled, as a last desperate effort, to turn 
my back on the awful fresco, and at least to save my face from coming 
into contact with it and being glued to its surface.  With a shriek 
of anguish I wrenched myself round and fell prostrate on the ground, 
face downwards, with my back to the wall, feeling as though the 
flesh had been torn from my hand and arm.  Whether I was saved or 
not I knew not.  My whole being was over-powered by the realisation 
of the deception to which I had succumbed.  I had looked for something 
so different,--darkness, vacant, deserted rooms, and perhaps a tall, 
white, empty canvas in a frame, against which I should have been 
on my guard.  Who could have anticipated or suspected this cheerful 
welcome, these entertaining literati, these innocent-looking frescoes?  
Who could have foreseen so deadly a horror in such a guise?  Was 
I doomed?  Should I, too, be sucked in and absorbed, and perhaps 
C. after me, knowing nothing of my fate?  I had no voice;  I could 
not warn him;  all my force seemed to have been spent on the single 
shriek I had uttered as I turned my back on the wall.  I lay prone 
upon the floor, and knew that I had swooned.
	
And thus, on seeking me, C. would doubtless have found me, lying 
insensible among the rubbish, with the rooms restored to the condition 
in which we had seen them by day, my success in withdrawing myself 
having dissolved the spell and destroyed the enchantment.  But as 
it was, I awoke from my swoon only to find that I had been dreaming.
 




XXIV.  The Square in the Hand

	


The foregoing dream was almost immediately succeeded by another, 
in which I dreamt that I was concerned in a very prominent way in 
a political struggle in France for liberty and the people's rights.  
My part in this struggle was, indeed, the leading one, but my friend 
C. had been drawn into it at my instance, and was implicated in a 
secondary manner only.  The government sought our arrest, and, for 
a time, we evaded all attempts to take us, but at last we were 
surprised and driven under escort in a private carriage to a military 
station, where we were to be detained for examination.  With us 
was arrested a man popularly known as "Fou," a poor weakling whom I 
much pitied.  When we arrived at the station which was our destination, 
"Fou" gave some trouble to the officials.  I think he fainted, but 
at all events his conveyance from the carriage to the caserne needed 
the conjoined efforts of our escort, and some commotion was caused 
by his appearance among the crowd assembled to see us.  Clearly 
the crowd was sympathetic with us and hostile to the military.  
I particularly noticed one woman who pressed forward as "Fou" was 
being carried into the station, and who loudly called on all present 
to note his feeble condition and the barbarity of arresting a witless 
creature such as he.  At that moment C. laid his hand on my arm and 
whispered:  "Now is our time;  the guards are all occupied with 'Fou;'  
we are left alone for a minute;  let us jump out of the carriage 
and run!"  As he said this he opened the carriage door on the side 
opposite to the caserne and alighted in the street.  I instantly 
followed, and the people favoring us, we pressed through them and 
fled at the top of our speed down the road.  As we ran I espied a 
pathway winding up a hillside away from the town, and cried, "Let 
us go up there;  let us get away from the street!"  C. answered, 
"No, no;  they would see us there immediately at that height, the 
path is too conspicuous.  Our best safety is to lose ourselves in 
the town.  We may throw them off our track by winding in and out 
of the streets."  Just then a little child, playing in the road, 
got in our way, and nearly threw us down as we ran.  We had to pause 
a moment to recover ourselves.  "That child may have cost us our 
lives," whispered C., breathlessly.  A second afterwards we reached 
the bottom of the street which branched off right and left.  I 
hesitated a moment;  then we both turned to the right.  As we did so--
in the twinkling of an eye--we found ourselves in the midst of a 
group of soldiers coming round the corner.  I ran straight into 
the arms of one of them, who the same instant knew me and seized 
me by throat and waist with a grip of iron.  This was a horrible 
moment!  The iron grasp was sudden and solid as the grip of a vice;  
the man's arm held my waist like a bar of steel.  "I arrest you!" 
he cried, and the soldiers immediately closed round us.  At once 
I realised the hopelessness of the situation,--the utter futility 
of resistance.  "Vous n'avez pas besoin de me tenir ainsi," I said 
to the officer;  "j irai tranquillement"  He loosened his hold and 
we were then marched off to another military station, in a different 
part of the town from that whence we had escaped.  The man who had 
arrested me was a sergeant or some officer in petty command.  He 
took me alone with him into the guardroom, and placed before me 
on a wooden table some papers which he told me to fill in and sign.  
Then he sat down opposite to me and I looked through the papers.  
They were forms, with blanks left for descriptions specifying the 
name, occupation, age, address and so forth of arrested persons.  
I signed these, and pushing them across the table to the man, asked 
him what was to be done with us.  "You will be shot," he replied, 
quickly and decisively.  "Both of us?" I asked.  "Both," he replied.  
"But," said I, "my companion has done nothing to deserve death.  
He was drawn into this struggle entirely by me.  Consider, too, 
his advanced age.  His hair is white;  he stoops, and, had it not 
been for the difficulty with which he moves his limbs, both of us 
would probably be at this moment in a place of safety.  What can 
you gain by shooting an old man such as he?"  The officer was silent.  
He neither favored nor discouraged me by his manner.  While I sat 
awaiting his reply, I glanced at the hand with which I had just 
signed the papers, and a sudden idea flashed into my mind.   "At 
least," I said, "grant me one request.  If my companion must die, 
let me die first."  Now I made this request for the following reason.  
In my right hand, the line of life broke abruptly halfway in its 
length, indicating a sudden and violent death.  But the point at 
which it broke was terminated by a perfectly marked square, 
extraordinarily clear-cut and distinct.  Such a square, occurring 
at the end of a broken line means rescue, salvation.  I had long 
been aware of this strange figuration in my hand, and had often 
wondered what it presaged.  But now, as once more I looked at it, 
it came upon me with sudden conviction that in some way I was 
destined to be delivered from death at the last moment, and I thought 
that if this be so it would be horrible should C. have been killed 
first.  If I were to be saved I should certainly save him also, 
for my pardon would involve the pardon of both, or my rescue the 
rescue of both.  Therefore it was important to provide for his safety 
until after my fate was decided.  The officer seemed to take this 
last request into more serious consideration than the first.  He 
said shortly:  "I may be able to manage that for you," and then 
at once rose and took up the papers I had signed.  "When are we to 
be shot?" I asked him. "Tomorrow morning," he replied, as promptly 
as before.  Then he went out, turning the key of the guardroom upon me.
 

The dawn of the next day broke darkly.  It was a terribly stormy day;  
great black lurid thunderclouds lay piled along the horizon, and 
came up slowly and awfully against the wind.  I looked upon them 
with terror;  they seemed so near the earth, and so like living, 
watching things.  They hung out of the sky, extending long ghostly 
arms downwards, and their gloom and density seemed supernatural.  
The soldiers took us out, our hands bound behind us, into a quadrangle 
at the back of their barracks.  The scene is sharply impressed on 
my mind.  A palisade of two sides of a square, made of wooden planks, 
ran round the quadrangle.  Behind this palisade, and pressed up 
close against it, was a mob of men and women--the people of the 
town--come to see the execution.  But their faces were sympathetic;  
an unmistakable look of mingled grief and rage, not unmixed with 
desperation--for they were a down-trodden folk--shone in the hundreds 
of eyes turned towards us.  I was the only woman among the condemned.  
C. was there, and poor "Fou," looking bewildered, and one or two 
other prisoners.  On the third and fourth sides of the quadrangle 
was a high wall, and in a certain place was a niche partly enclosing 
the trunk of a tree, cut off at the top.  An iron ring was driven 
into the trunk midway, evidently for the purpose of securing condemned 
persons for execution.  I guessed it would be used for that now.  
In the centre of the square piece of ground stood a file of soldiers, 
armed with carbines, and an officer with a drawn sabre.  The palisade 
was guarded by a row of soldiers somewhat sparsely distributed, 
ertainly not more than a dozen in all.  A Catholic priest in a black 
cassock walked beside me, and as we were conducted into the enclosure, 
he turned to me and offered religious consolation.  I declined his 
ministrations, but asked him anxiously if he knew which of us was 
to die first.  "You," he replied;  "the officer in charge of you 
said you wished it, and he has been able to accede to your request."  
Even then I felt a singular joy at hearing this, though I had no 
longer any expectation of release.  Death was, I thought, far too 
near at hand for that.  Just then a soldier approached us, and led me, 
bare-headed, to the tree trunk, where he placed me with my back 
against it, and made fast my hands behind me with a rope to the 
iron ring.  No bandage was put over my eyes.  I stood thus, facing 
the file of soldiers in the middle of the quadrangle, and noticed 
that the officer with the drawn sabre placed himself at the extremity 
of the line, composed of six men.  In that supreme moment I also 
noticed that their uniform was bright with steel accoutrements.  
Their helmets were of steel, and their carbines, as they raised 
them and pointed them at me, ready cocked, glittered in a fitful 
gleam of sunlight with the same burnished metal.  There was an 
instant's stillness and hush while the men took aim;  then I saw 
the officer raise his bared sabre as the signal to fire.  It flashed 
in the air;  then, with a suddenness impossible to convey, the 
whole quadrangle blazed with an awful light,--a light so vivid, 
so intense, so blinding, so indescribable that everything was blotted 
out and devoured by it.  It crossed my brain with instantaneous 
conviction that this amazing glare was the physical effect of being 
shot, and that the bullets had pierced my brain or heart, and caused 
this frightful sense of all-pervading flame.  Vaguely I remembered 
having read or having been told that such was the result produced 
on the nervous system of a victim to death from firearms.  "It is 
over," I said, "that was the bullets."  But presently there forced 
itself on my dazed senses a sound--a confusion of sounds--darkness 
succeeding the white flash--then steadying itself into gloomy daylight;  
a tumult;  a heap of stricken, tumbled men lying stone-still before me;  
a fearful horror upon every living face;  and then . . . it all 
burst on me with distinct conviction.  The storm which had been 
gathering all the morning had culminated in its blackest and most 
electric point immediately overhead.  The file of soldiers appointed 
to shoot us stood exactly under it.  Sparkling with bright steel 
on head and breast and carbines, they stood shoulder to shoulder, 
a complete lightning conductor, and at the end of the chain they 
formed, their officer, at the critical moment, raised his shining, 
naked blade towards the sky.  Instantaneously heaven opened, and 
the lightning fell, attracted by the burnished steel.  From blade 
to carbine, from helmet to breastplate it ran, smiting every man 
dead as he stood. 

They fell like a row of ninepins, blackened in face and hand in 
an instant,--in the twinkling of an eye.  Dead.  The electric flame 
licked the life out of seven men in that second;  not one moved a 
muscle or a finger again.  Then followed a wild scene.  The crowd, 
stupefied for a minute by the thunderbolt and the horror of the 
devastation it had wrought, presently recovered sense, and with 
a mighty shout hurled itself against the palisade, burst it, leapt 
over it and swarmed into the quadrangle, easily overpowering the 
unnerved guards.  I was surrounded;  eager hands unbound mine;  
arms were thrown about me;  the people roared, and wept, and triumphed, 
and fell about me on their knees praising Heaven.  I think rain fell, 
my face was wet with drops, and my hair,--but I knew no more, for 
I swooned and lay unconscious in the arms of the crowd.  My rescue 
had indeed come, and from the very Heavens!

--Rome, April 12, 1887





Dream-Verses




"Through the Ages"


Wake, thou that sleepest! Soul, awake!
	Thy light is come, arise and shine!
	For darkness melts, and dawn divine
Doth from the holy Orient break;

Swift-darting down the shadowy ways 
	And misty deeps of unborn Time, 
	God's Light, God's Day, whose perfect prime
Is as the light of seven days.

Wake, prophet-soul, the time draws near, 
	"The God who knows" within thee stirs 
	And speaks, for His thou art, and Hers
Who bears the mystic shield and spear.

The hidden secrets of their shrine 
	Where thou, initiate, didst adore, 
	Their quickening finger shall restore
And make its glories newly thine.

A touch divine shall thrill thy brain,
	Thy soul shall leap to life, and lo!
	What she has known, again shall know;
What she has seen, shall see again;

The ancient Past through which she came,--
	A cloud across a sunset sky,--
	A cactus flower of scarlet dye,--
A bird with throat and wings of flame;--
 
A red wild roe, whose mountain bed 
	Nor ever hound or hunter knew, 
	Whose flying footprint dashed the dew
In nameless forests, long since dead.

And ever thus in ceaseless roll 
	The wheels of Destiny and Time 
	Through changing form and age and clime 
	Bear onward the undying Soul:

Till now a Sense, confused and dim, 
	Dawns in a shape of nobler mould, 
	Less beast, scarce human; uncontrolled,
With free fierce life in every limb;
 
A savage youth, in painted gear,
	Foot fleeter than the summer wind;
	Scant speech for scanty needs designed, 
Content with sweetheart, spoil and spear

And, passing thence, with burning breath, 
	A fiery Soul that knows no fear, 
	The armed hosts of Odin hear
Her voice amid the ranks of death;

There, where the sounds of war are shrill, 
	And clarion shrieks, and battle roars, 
	Once more set free, she leaps and soars
A Soul of flame, aspiring still!

Till last, in fairer shape she stands 
	Where lotus-scented waters glide, 
	A Theban Priestess, dusky-eyed,
Barefooted on the golden sands;
 
Or, prostrate, in the Temple-halls, 
	When Spirits wake, and mortals sleep, 
	She hears what mighty Voices sweep
Like winds along the columned walls.

A Princess then beneath the palms 
	Which wave o'er Afric's burning plains, 
	The blood of Afric in thy veins,
A golden circlet on thine arms.

By sacred Ganges' sultry tide, 
	With dreamy gaze and clasped hands 
	Thou walkst a Seeress in the lands
Where holy Buddha lived and died.

Anon, a sea-bleached mountain cave 
	Makes shelter for thee, grave and wan, 
	Thou solemn, solitary Man, 
Who, nightly, by the star-lit wave

Invokest with illumined eyes 
	The steadfast Lords who rule and wait 
	Beyond the heavens and Time and fate, 
Until the perfect Dawn shall rise,

And oracles, through ages dumb, 
	Shall wake, and holy forms shall shine 
	On mountain peaks in light divine, 
When mortals bid God's kingdom come

So turns the wheel of thy [keen] soul; 
	From birth to birth her ruling stars, 
	Swift Mercury and fiery Mars,
In ever changing orbits roll!

--Paris, May, 1880





Fragment


A jarring note, a chord amiss--
	The music's sweeter after, 
Like wrangling ended with a kiss, 
	Or tears, with silver laughter.

The high gods have no joys like these, 
	So sweet in human story;
No tempest rends their tranquil seas 
	Beyond the sunset glory.

The whirling wheels of Time and Fate  
 




Fragment*


I thank Thee, Lord, who hast through devious ways 
	Led me to know Thy Praise, 
	And to this Wildernesse
Hast brought me out, Thine Israel to blesse.

If I should faint with Thirst, or weary, sink, 
	To these my Soule is Drink, 
	To these the Majick Rod
Is Life, and mine is hid with Christ in God.

----------
* These are not properly dream-verses, having been suddenly presented 
to the waking vision one day in Paris while gazing at the bright 
sky. (Ed.)





Signs of the Times 

Eyes of the dawning in heaven? 
Sparks from the opening of hell? 
Gleams from the altar-lamps seven? 
	Can you tell?

Is it the glare of a fire? 
Is it the breaking of day? 
Birth lights, or funeral pyre? 
	Who shall say? 
				
--April 19, 1886.





With the Gods 


Sweet lengths of shore with sea between, 
Sweet gleams of tender blue and green, 
Sweet wind caressive and unseen,
	Soft breathing from the deep;

What joy have I in all sweet things; 
How clear and bright my spirit sings; 
Rising aloft on mystic wings;
	While sense and body sleep.

In some such dream of grace and light, 
My soul shall pass into the sight 
Of the dear Gods who in the height
	Of inward being dwell; 

And joyful at Her perfect feet 
Whom most of all I long to greet, 
My soul shall lie in meadow sweet
	All white with asphodel.
 
--August 31, 1887.
 




Part II.  Dream-Stories
 



I.  A Village of Seers--
	A Christmas Story




A day or two before Christmas, a few years since, I found myself 
compelled by business to leave England for the Continent.
	
I am an American, junior partner in a London mercantile house having 
a large Swiss connection;  and a transaction--needless to specify 
her--required immediate and personal supervision abroad, at a season 
of the year when I would gladly have kept festival in London with 
my friends.  But my journey was destined to bring me an adventure 
of a very remarkable character, which made me full amends for the 
loss of Christmas cheer at home.
	
I crossed the Channel at night from Dover to Calais.  The passage 
was bleak and snowy, and the passengers were very few.  On board 
the steamboat I remarked one traveler whose appearance and manner 
struck me as altogether unusual and interesting, and I deemed it 
by no means a disagreeable circumstance that, on arriving at Calais, 
this man entered the compartment of the railway carriage in which 
I had already seated myself.
	
So far as the dim light permitted me a glimpse of the stranger's 
face, I judged him to be about fifty years of age.  The features 
were delicate and refined in type, the eyes dark and deep-sunken, 
but full of intelligence and thought, and the whole aspect of the 
man denoted good birth, a nature given to study and meditation, 
and a life of much sorrowful experience.
	
Two other travelers occupied our carriage until Amiens was reached.  
They then left us, and the interesting stranger and I remained 
alone together.
	
"A bitter night," I said to him, as I drew up the window, "and the 
worst of it is yet to come!  The early hours of dawn are always 
the coldest."
	
"I suppose so," he answered in a grave voice.
	
The voice impressed me as strongly as the face;  it was subdued 
and restrained, the voice of a man undergoing great mental suffering.
	
"You will find Paris bleak at this season of the year," I continued, 
longing to make him talk.  "It was colder there last winter than 
in London."
	
"I do not stay in Paris," he replied, "save to breakfast."
	
"Indeed;  that is my case.  I am going on to Bale."
	
"And I also," he said, "and further yet."
	
Then he turned his face to the window, and would say no more.  My 
speculations regarding him multiplied with his taciturnity.  I felt 
convinced that he was a man with a romance, and a desire to know 
its nature became strong in me.  We breakfasted apart at Paris, 
but I watched him into his compartment for Bale, and sprang in after 
him.  During the first part of our journey we slept;  but, as we 
neared the Swiss frontier, a spirit of wakefulness took hold of us, 
and fitful sentences were exchanged.  My companion, it appeared, 
intended to rest but a single day at Bale.  He was bound for far-away 
Alpine regions, ordinarily visited by tourists during the summer 
months only, and, one would think, impassable at this season of the year.
	
"And you go alone?" I asked him.  "You will have no companions to 
join you?"
	
"I shall have guides," he answered, and relapsed into meditative silence.
	
Presently I ventured another question:  "You go on business, perhaps--
not on pleasure?"
	
He turned his melancholy eyes on mine.  "Do I look as if I were 
traveling for pleasure's sake?" he asked gently.
	
I felt rebuked, and hastened to apologise.  "Pardon me;  I ought 
not to have said that.  But you interest me greatly, and I wish, 
if possible, to be of service to you.  If you are going into Alpine 
districts on business and alone, at this time of the year--"
	
There I hesitated and paused.  How could I tell him that he interested 
me so much as to make me long to know the romance which, I felt 
convinced, attached to his expedition?  Perhaps he perceived what 
was in my mind, for he questioned me in his turn.  "And you--have 
you business in Bale?"
	
"Yes, and in other places.  My accent may have told you my nationality.  
I travel in the interests of the American firm, Fletcher Bros., 
Roy, & Co., whose London house, no doubt, you know.  But I need 
remain only twenty-four hours in Bale.  Afterwards I go to Berne, 
then to Geneva.  I must, however, wait for letters from England 
after doing my business at Bale, and I shall have some days free." 
	
"How many?"
	
"From the 21st to the 26th."
	
He was silent for a minute, meditating.  Then he took from his 
traveling-bag a porte-feuille, and from the porte-feuille a v