Three o’clock in the morning had just struck, and he had been walking thus for five hours, almost uninterruptedly, when he at length allowed himself to drop into his chair. There he fell asleep and had a dream.
This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to the situation, except by its painful and heart-rending character, but it made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so forcibly that he wrote it down later on.
It is one of the papers in his own handwriting which he has bequeathed to us. We think that we have here reproduced the thing in strict accordance with the text.
Of whatever nature this dream may be, the history of this night would be incomplete if we were to omit it: it is the gloomy adventure of an ailing soul. Here it is. On the envelope we find this line inscribed, 'The Dream I had that Night.
' 'I was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no grass. It did not seem to me to be daylight nor yet night.
'I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childish years, the brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now hardly remember. 'We were conversing and we met some passers-by.
We were talking of a neighbor of ours in former days, who had always worked with her window open from the time when she came to live on the street. As we talked we felt cold because of that open window. 'There were no trees in the plain.
We saw a man passing close to us. He was entirely nude, of the hue of ashes, and mounted on a horse which was earth color. The man had no hair; we could see