Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (172 page)

H
e
waved his pipe at me angrily :

"Words,"
he
said.
"We
are
doped
with
words,
and
we
go
to
sleep on
them
and
snore
about
them.
So
with
dream.
We
issue
tomes about
it,
and
we
might
as
well
issue
writs
for
all
the
information
we give."

I
halted
him
there,
for
I
respect
science
and
love
investigation.

"Scientists
don't
claim
to
give
answers
to
the
riddles
of
existence,"
I
expostulated,
"their
business
is
to
gather
and
classify
whatever
facts are
available,
and
when
a
sufficient
number
of
these
have
been
collected
there
is
usually
found
among
them
an
extra
thing
which
makes examination
possible."

"Hum!"
said
he.

"The
difficulty
lies
in
getting
all
the
facts,
but
when
these
are
given much
more
is
given;
for
if
a
question
can
be
fully
stated
the
answer is
conveyed
in
the
question."

"That's
it,"
said
he,
"they
don't
know
enough,
but
there
is
a
wide
pretence
----
"

"More
a
prophecy
than
a
pretence.
They
really
state
that
this
or that
thing
is
knowable.
It
is
only
that
you
live
hurriedly,
and
you think
everything
else
should
be
geared
up
to
your
number."

"And
they
are
so
geared,
or
they
would
not
be
visible
and
audible and
tangible
to
me.
But
a
ghost
is
geared
differently
to
me;
and
I
think that
when
I
am
asleep
and
dreaming
I
am
geared
differently
to
the person
who
is
talking
to
you
here." "Possibly."

"Certainly.
Look
at
the
time
it
has
taken
you
and
I
to
chatter
our mutual
nonsense.
In
an
instant
of
that
time
I
could
have
had
a
dream; and,
in
its
infinitesimal
duration,
all
the
adventures
and
excitements of
twenty
or
forty
years
could
take
place
in
ample
and
leisurely sequence.
Someone
has
measured
dream,
and
has
recorded
that elaborate
and
complicated
dreams
covering
years
of
time
can
take place
while
you
would
be
saying
knife."

"It
was
du
Prell,"
I
said.

"Whoever
it
was,
I've
seen
a
person
awake
and
talking,
but
sleepy; noted
that
person
halt
for
the
beat
of
a
word
in
his
sentence,
and continue
with
the
statement
that
he
has
had
a
horrible
dream.
It must
have
taken
place
in
the
blink
of
an
eye.
There
is
no
doubt
that while
we
are
asleep
a
power
is
waking
in
us
which
is
more
amazing than
any
function
we
know
of
in
waking
life.
It
is
lightning
activity, lightning
order,
lightning
intelligence;
and
that
is
not
to
be
considered as
rhetoric,
but
as
sober
statement.
The
proposition
being,
that
in sleep
the
mind
does
actually
move
at
the
speed
of
lightning."

He
went
on
more
soberly:

"Last
night
I
had
a
dream,
and
in
it
twenty
good
years
were
lived through
with
all
their
days
and
nights
in
the
proper
places;
and
a whole
chain
of
sequential
incidents
working
from
the
most
definite beginning
to
the
most
adequate
end—and
perhaps
it
all
took
place between
the
beginning
and
the
ending
of
a
yawn."