Two dreams of this species I should like to offer for consideration. I have had not less than twenty others, widely different in substance though all alike in principle; but the memory of most of them is vague if not entirely obliterated. Of the first dream here related I may say that I am repeating it from a fresh memory and am following the notes I made of it in full immediately upon awakening from it. The account here given is therefore as accurate as I can make it. I may further explain that the setting of the dream is a very natural one for me. I happen to be a college professor, and lecturing to classes is my daily round. Also I have lived in France, and have studied and written about the educational system of that country; and I number among my friends a distinguished French professor now visiting America. The bearing of these facts upon the dream will be clear in a moment.
I dreamt that I was lecturing to one of my regular classes in college. In the class, upon my entrance, I was surprised to find my friend the French professor, of whom I spoke a moment ago. With him there was an impressive individual whom I somehow recognized as a French inspector of schools—one of those officials whose visits to provincial schools and whose consequent reports to the minister at Paris are the chief hope and dread of the French pedagogue. How these gentlemen should have come to be visiting my class, I could not imagine, but I do not think I was much worried in the dream over that question. I do remember telling myself that as a mere American professor I had nothing to fear from the inspector’s formidable authority, though perhaps with this reflection there went also a resolution to put my best foot forward in such distinguished company. But I had not much time to ponder these matters before proceeding upon my lecture.
It was then that a real surprise began. So far as I could tell, my opening sentences were sufficiently conventional, but the way the class was affected by them was singular to a degree. Hardly had I reached the middle of the first one before all the students had their eyes fixed on me in a way that might possibly have been complimentary had not their expressions been so various and so peculiar. A few students wore a look of great relief—for all the world as if they had expected to find me dumb on that day, and were agreeably surprised to be disillusioned. A considerably larger number frowned displeasure, just as if I had disturbed them in the pursuit of something that was no affair of mine. But the large majority showed mere astonishment, and of that emotion, indeed, a good measure was written on the faces of all. I had no notion what to make of these unusual appearances. Inevitably my first thought was to glance furtively down at my clothes and shoes to see if everything was well in those departments. Also I raised my hand as unobtrusively as possible to discover whether perchance I had left my hair uncombed. In the absence of the mirror’s final test I had to conclude that all was about as it should be.
Naturally my next sentences hardly came trippingly from the tongue, nor did any alteration occur in my listeners to facilitate my labors. On the contrary, what had at first been mainly mere surprise upon their faces was growing rapidly to obvious merriment with about half of the class, and to evident disapprobation with the others. “The explanation of what we call the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century,” I remember hurling at them with a fine generality of dream-eloquence, “is to be sought not so much in the influence of the doctrines of Descartes proper, or of those who could call themselves consistent Cartesians, as in the general dependence upon the guidance of human ratiocination, of which dependence he was only an illustrious example.” This remarkable statement did not seem to offend any of my hearers, but neither did it mollify them. By a considerable effort, however, I was regaining a measure of composure, as I proceeded into my subject, in spite of all the frowners and all the titterers in the class. There was nothing to do, I felt, but to brave both parties, and in some degree, as the minutes dragged on, I seemed to be succeeding in the effort. At least there was less staring at me, and one after another the faces of my students were turned down to the desks, and pens began to course across pages in what appeared to me to be good note-taking fashion.
But I was soon to find that my troubles had only begun. The class had indeed ceased to perform like one man in astonishment, but various individuals now began to act in fashions unaccountably extraordinary. Not only did resentment at my lecture keep lingering, and growing, on many countenances, and not only did laughter keep bubbling up in others, but now certain more specific eccentricities began exhibiting themselves. A mild instance was the action of one of my most devoted note-takers, a woman who sat on the front row. She had always taken too many notes, as I had observed; she never missed anything important, and she frequently copied down much that was far from important. And now I noticed that in the middle of certain cardinal statements I was making, and even making slowly in order that every one who wanted them in a note-book might have time to get them fully, she took her pen from the paper, and meditatively putting the end of it in her mouth, proceeded to gaze out of the window into vacancy as if trying to think what on earth to write next.
But this, as I say, was mild. That particular student was too well-bred to be ruder. So was another girl on the front row who, a little later, laid aside her pen and paper and sank her head for several minutes into her hands in such a way as to make me wonder whether she was suffering from headache or whether she was politely veiling an outbreak of laughter such as certain other members of the class were at no such pains to conceal. Certainly when her face emerged it was clear that she had not even been smiling. She looked at me fixedly for a minute, with such an inquiring though guarded glance as one might give a stranger whom one half suspected of mild lunacy, and then resumed work with her pen. There were numerous examples of similarly harmless but abnormal conduct, and I had no choice but to endure them in wondering patience. But when one sedate and trusted student, also a woman, who sat in the rear of the class, deliberately caught my eye and then impressively laid her finger tightly over her closed lips, thus giving me the unmistakable signal for silence, my astonishment and bewilderment grew amain. What on earth could be wrong with me, I asked myself, that I should be bedevilling my students in this fashion? What absurdity was at the bottom of all this? Had everybody in my class gone crazy? Or had I?
Somehow I went on lecturing. As I remember it now, the lecture seemed orthodox enough, in spite of the strange events that it inspired. I felt that I was acquitting myself moderately well, though I remember that I mopped my brow repeatedly, and longed for the end of the period as I had never longed for time to pass before. What would my visitors think of me, or of this precious class of mine? I alone had seen that mute sign for silence, to be sure, but no one could fail to notice the other preposterous things that were coming to pass. For now three men toward the rear of the class began, seemingly by agreement between them, to shake their heads at me in a solemn and unequivocal signal that I would do better to leave off my lecture. This, I thought, would be the worst; but no, in a moment one man actually stepped up to my desk, and when I paused, whispered a very apologetic request that I would not trouble the class further by lecturing on this particular day. He had listened with great interest to my former lectures, he was pleased to say, but he felt that he was speaking for the whole class in intimating that to-day I could not but disturb them, and in fact endanger them, if I continued. I told him that he could save himself from further danger by quitting the room; and this he did forthwith, his reluctance exceeded only by his apparent amazement.
The others seemed to understand what had passed between us, though I was sure that they could not have overheard a word we said. Four or five of them, indeed, rose and followed their departing brother from their room, with faces as full of bewilderment as his. But I was past wondering at anything by this time. Endeavoring to seem indifferent to their departure, I ploughed on, with a pertinacity far beyond anything I possess in a waking state, through the middle of my lecture. I had come to Rousseau and his battle with the apostles of the Enlightenment. And about this point the craziest of all the occurrences of this remarkable hour began. A man on the front row picked up a card-board box from the floor near his feet. Opening it, he produced a roll of absorbent cotton. With bits of this he deliberately set about stopping up his ears as tightly as he could. When he had stuffed them full he resumed work with his pen, but passed the cotton, with a wink, on to his neighbor, who repeated the performance. A third student filled his organs of audition and handed the box on to a fourth. I watched that blessed roll of cotton make its round of the students. One and all of them, men and women, stuffed their ears with it!
How I managed to keep on talking is rather more than I can tell. I can only say that I continued automatically, and paid the slightest possible attention to the antics with which my auditors were pleased to amuse themselves. I was but little surprised when, after a while, they began to leave. Not concertedly, but one by one, they rose and passed out, still lowering, giggling, trembling, looking askance at me, or exhibiting some other inexplicable emotion as they departed. Each one, with whatever mien, took pains to leave a record in the form of a few sheets of paper deposited on my desk as he passed out, but I was too callous or too distraught by this time to do more than barely notice the circumstance. As for my visitors from France, they had long since disappeared—not by walking out, like the students, but simply by vanishing, as people in a dream occasionally do. I kept lecturing, doggedly, until I had only three students left. But when two of these arose together and took their departure, I knew nothing to do but cease. The one auditor remaining, for that matter, was even now about to rise from his seat. I paused. I waited as he came slowly forward, with wonder and distress written on his features—he was easily the best scholar in the class. As I eyed him I could see that he, like so many of the rest, seemed to be half afraid that I had lost my mind. We shall see about that, I thought, as I addressed him.
“Will you kindly tell me, sir,” I asked him, with some warmth, “Will you kindly tell me what I have done to deserve such conduct as I have seen this last hour? Have all my students gone mad, or have I?”