If we could but manage this raree-show, and not be mere marionettes, wired to the finger of the Magician, what tremendous adventures might we not undertake! We have rare glimpses of the Lesser Mysteries, but the inner secrets of that inconsequential empire are still undiscovered. The revels confound us; we are whirled, intoxicated or drugged, into a realm of confusion, and, out of touch with senses, reason and will, we cannot quite keep our heads clear. How many of us have tried to "dream true," like Peter Ibbetson, even to obeying the foolish formula he described, lying, hands under head, foot upon foot, murmuring his magic words?
Try as we may, those of us who are true dreamers can never quite accept the psychologist's explanation of dreams. Some cases may be easily understood, perhaps, such as the pathological influence of a Welsh rarebit, a superabundance of bed covers, or suggestive noises. We may account, too, for those absurd visions that appear so often on awakening, when one sense after another comes breaking into our consciousness, and when the mind, summoned suddenly to construct some reasonable relation between incongruous floating pictures, seizes upon any explanation, however ridiculous. But of deeper dreams, dreams logical or meaningful, dreams that recur or are shared by others, modern science does not give any satisfactory theory, and we are forced, willingly enough no doubt, to apply the hypotheses of mysticism.
There are dreams, too, so progressive and educational that they seem to involve a new science unknown in this workaday world. So many of us have had experiences with levitation in our dream life that we are, so to speak, a cult. I myself began by jumping, timing each spring with the precise moment of alighting from a previous leap, profiting by the rebound, and, after many experiments I am now able to float freely, even accomplishing that most difficult of all feats, rising in the air by a deliberate concentrated effort of will, even while lying on my back. Yet all of us, jumpers, flyers or floaters, must wait till that wonderful dream comes to us, after months maybe, to indulge in that most exhilarating pastime.
Children's dreams are (until they are cruelly undeceived) quite as real as their waking moments, and it may be that we shall, in time, learn the forgotten art from them. It is dependent, no doubt, upon their power of visualizing imagined objects while their eyes are shut, but while still awake; but this ability to call up the images of anything at will is as soon lost as their belief in dreams. Though this habit fades and is forgotten in the growing reality of our outward life, it may not be impossible with practice to regain the proficiency, for at times of great physical fatigue and mental exaltation the power comes back, often intensified almost to the point of hallucination. If we could train our imagination then, and learn to see pictures when our eyes are shut, these might become more accurate and real, so that at the moment of sinking into unconsciousness, as we lose hold on tangible things, the vision would become one with the reality, and, still imagining and creating, we might pass over the footlights and dream true. To most of us there comes a recognizable moment when we know we are just at the border of sleep; if we could then with our last effort of will keep control of the moving pictures we might go wherever we wished.
We might learn, too, to remember more of what happens in the night. We usually give what has passed in dream no more than an indulgent smile, and forget the strangeness of it all as soon as we are well awake. It is as if we had hurriedly turned the pages of an illustrated book. We recall, here and there, a few striking pictures, beautiful or comic, and the volume is replaced upon the shelves not to be taken down till the next evening. It is a book from which we learn little; its contents are not even amusing to anyone else, who has as fanciful tales in his own dreamland library. If we could, upon first awakening, impress our minds with the reality of our dreams, we might be able to recall more and more, and find that in spite of their incongruity there was some law which governed their visitation and some meaning in their grotesque patterns.
To one who dreams frequently, bedtime cannot fail to be something to look forward to, to hope and to prepare for with efforts to capture in the net of sleep some beautiful dream. May we not, sometime, find the proper bait, and lie down confident that we shall be duly enchanted in some delightful way, according to our desires? Till then we must each buy our nightly ticket in Sleep's lottery, and draw a blank or a prize, as Morpheus wills. Some say that the most refreshing sleep is absolute unconsciousness of time--that one should shut one's eyes, only to open them in the morning, with the night all unaccounted for. But no true dreamer will assent to this; he knows it is not so. I was told in my youth, that if I turned the toes of my boots toward the bed, I should have a nightmare. I confess I have never dared try it. But, rather than not dream at all, I believe I should be tempted to hazard the experiment.
The Art of Playing
Time was when we made our own toys; when a piece of twine, a spool, a few nails and a bit of imagination could keep us busy and happy all day long. There were no new-fangled iron toys "made in Germany," so tiresome in their inevitable little routine of performance, so easily got out of order, and so hard, metallic and realistic as to be hardly worth the purchase. A penny would, indeed, buy some funny carved wooden thing that aroused a half-hour's excitement, but it was never quite so alluring as when in the front window of the toy-shop. Such queer animals never became thoroughly acclimated to the nursery, and they lost their lustre in a half-holiday. The things that gave permanent satisfaction were home-made, crude and capable of transformation. A railway train might, with a small effort of the fancy, become a ship or a dragon. Are there such amateur toy-builders now, in this age when everything is perfect and literal, when even a box of building-blocks contains a book of plans to supply imaginative design to the modern child? Indeed, many children are nowayears too lazy even to do their own playing. I have heard of one who was used to sit on a chair and order his nurse to align his ninepins and bowl them down for him!
Perhaps one notices the lack of creative ability in children more in the city where ready-made toys are cheap and accessible, than in the country where the whole world is full of wonderful possibilities for entrancing pastime. Nature is the universal playmate, perpetually parodying herself in miniature for the benefit of those who love to amuse themselves with her toys. Every brook is a little river, every pond an unfathomable sea. She plants tiny forests of fern and raises microscopic mountains in every sand-bank. Flowers and plants furnish provender for Lilliputian groceries, the oak showers acorn cups; what wonder we believe, as long as we can, in fairies?
And yet, strange to say, it is the city more often than the country child who feels the charm of these marvels. The freshness and the strangeness breed a fascinated wonder; it is, after flagged pavements and brick walls, almost too good to be true. The juvenile rustic is more familiar with Nature. It is his business to know when the flowers come, where berries ripen and birds nest. It is scarcely play to him, it is a science to be applied to his personal profit. The woods and rivulets are his familiar domain, to be forayed and hunted specifically for gain. And this, though it is delightful, is not play. For him, there is no glamour over the fields until long after, when his native countryside has become inaccessible.