Maj. André. I cannot leave this city, sweet Lucinda, without imparting to you that I am going a little way toward the American lines, at the request of his Excellency, upon some business of importance. I am come to chat a little with you ere I go. It may be some days before you see me again.
Lucinda. If it be not too great a presumption in me, my dear Major, I would beg to know whether you depart on a peaceable or hostile errand. You must pardon a woman's curiosity. I had a frightful dream about you a few nights ago, which I cannot banish from my mind ever since.
Maj. André. I am happy, madam, in being the subject of your dreams. But dreams are delusions of the mind, mere vagaries and whimsies not to be attended to. You may remember that, prior to our Charlestown expedition, you discouraged me a good deal with a vision you had of a vessel shipwrecked, and myself with the other passengers drowned, and yet little or nothing was intimated thereby. We made our passage safe, conquered the place, and returned with victory and honor.
Lucinda. True. But your fleet endured a terrible hurricane, in which many perished.
Maj. André. O Lucinda, thou art a dreamer of dreams, thou thinkest, love.
Lucinda. This last was represented to my mind in quite a different manner, in such lively colours that I cannot help thinking some evil is foreboded to you.
Maj. André. Poh! Let's hear the extraordinary dream, then, that we may laugh a little at it.
Lucinda. I imagined myself in a country where the skies were forever cloudy and gloomy, with frequent bursts of thunder and flashes of lightning. Among many other objects, all of which seemed disconsolate and melancholy, I saw you endeavouring to reach the summit of a sharp, craggy precipice. You leaped with surprising agility over dark gulfs and apertures therein, which no other man would have thought of passing. The spectators admired your activity and daring spirit. The continual obstacles in your way seemed nothing to you, and at length you bid fair to gain the summit, when, catching hold of a shrub, which was but slightly rooted in one of the crevices of the rock, it instantly gave way, and you tumbled to the bottom, dashed to pieces on the pointed crags and torn in a shocking manner. I shrieked out and waked.
Maj. André. Your dream was frightful indeed; but still it was nothing but a dream. Why, I have imagined before now in my sleep that I have tumbled down ten thousand fathoms in a perpendicular line; but all this was owing to mere mechanical causes, the motion of the animal spirits or the veins being rather too replete with blood.
Lucinda. Well, be it so. I hope my dream may be the forerunner of no mischief. But are you going out on a fighting expedition, sir, if I may be so bold to ask the question?