"At last, the young woman released the philosopher more dead than alive from his prison, and said to him, gravely,
"'Mr. Philosopher, don't forgot to insert this trick in your collection.'"
MANDRAGORA—BY THE DOZEN.
And so you cannot coax yourself off to sleep? Why? Were you beguiled by their exquisite flavour into rashly smoking three or four of those potent Regalias, with which your friend, the rich stock-broker, professes to aid the digestion of his guests, after a lengthened sitting at his luxurious table? Or did the rounded arm and taper fingers of his fair wife, presiding over the mysteries of the silver urn, tempt you to indulgence in too frequent cups of Souchong? Perhaps you are endeavouring, in spite of yourself, to solve some knotty problem in politics, or love, or chess, or mathematics. Perhaps you have a considerable bill to take up to-morrow, with a very slim balance at your banker's. Perhaps you have a heart-ache; perhaps a head-ache. At any rate, your nerves and senses are painfully strained; and you feel as though you would give the world and all, for a lullaby that would serve its purpose. My good Sir, compose your mind. If you can't sleep and dream, as you desire—dream and sleep. Reverse, I say, the common order. And do not sneer at the suggestion, unless you prefer tossing about all night in vain. The process is not only not impossible; it is not half so difficult as you might suppose, presuming—as I have a right to presume, in regard to my reader—that your imagination is not hopelessly inert.
Some persons recommend to the restless and wide-awake the repetition of scraps from books, in prose or verse, just as though every one had a plenteous store of "elegant extracts" garnered up in his memory, and as though authors specially aimed at being somniferous. There are indeed not a few among them, who unavoidably achieve this distinction; and the advice might not really be bad, if you could con over—once would be sufficient—Mr. A.'s last pamphlet on political economy, or the Rev. Mr. B.'s last sermon. On the whole however, inasmuch as your favourite passages—should you know any of them by heart—may be the very opposite of soothing in their tendencies, this mode of wooing slumber can scarcely be pronounced successful.
You must commence, I say, by dreaming, if you would compel yourself gently to sleep; but before I proceed to introduce to you my list of available prescriptions in this line, I note one with which my readers may possibly be familiar, having learned it in their school-boy days. You will not now be told for the first time, that a drowsy sensation may be induced by musing upon—or dreaming of, which is the same thing—a field of tall and ripe barley, swept by fresh autumnal gales. The rise and fall of each bowed head, with its feathery and graceful spikes, combines well with the undulating motion of the whole and the varied play of light and shade. The idea is otherwise expressed by the British Laureate in "The Poet's Song," one of his minor pieces; "and waves of shadow," says he, "went over the wheat." Nevertheless it is clear that he missed the proper application of the thought, for, in place of lulling the beholder to forgetful repose, the sight seems to have made him break out into a song so loud that wild swans paused to listen in their flight, larks fluttered down to earth, swallows gave up hunting bees, snakes slipped under sprays, wild hawks stared over sparrows stricken under their claws, and the very nightingales were set a-thinking. Truly a sad perversion this of a golden opportunity! But your rhymsters were ever a crazy race. When they deal with their fellows generally, we all know how they botch poor human nature. What, then, can be expected, when poets undertake to figure out one of themselves? Still, let us improve the occasion. Barley-fields or wheat-fields are well enough in their way; only, if you conjure up this image, I would advise you to season it with an abundance of red poppies intermingled with the legitimate crop, and a very careful attempt on your part to number these interlopers one by one, preparatory, if so it please you, to flipping off their heads. With due allowance, therefore, for its lack of novelty, this dream may be admitted into our collection.
And it may be proper to remark at the outset that, though the dreams whereof I propose to treat are sufficiently distinct in their kind, it is desirable, in the practical use of them, to run them one into another—to fuse them unconsciously as it were, without being over-nice as to the point at which one ends and another begins. It is not requisite, however, for this reason, that they should all be packed into one paragraph, like a daily paper's report of one of Mr. Morrill's speeches on the Tariff, or a Secretary of the Treasury's Report. You shall have each dainty conceit served up in its own dish, so that, furthermore by the way, you can take them in such order as suits your own good pleasure. This view of the matter relieves me also from the necessity of formal arrangement. It is altogether unimportant which fancy comes uppermost. The main thing is to shut off all thought concerning the actualities of life, eschewing reference to your loves, your hates, your wrestlings with circumstance, your mental cares, your bodily ailments. I repeat it: you must dream, if you would sleep. Counting the breezy barley-field above mentioned as one, I believe I can supply you with a dozen subjects.
Your physical eye is closed, of course—your mind's eye being, on that account, all the more keenly alive to impression, and the better able to compass an unembarrassed range. Set it, then, upon a spiral stairway endless so far as I can imagine it, though you may perchance by looking earnestly upward discover whereto it leads, or by peering intently downward find out its base. But did I say a stairway? That was not what I meant; and dreamers, of all men, are at liberty to change or modify their views. I should have said an inclined plane. Let it be steep, smooth, slippery, broad enough to admit the passage of several figures simultaneously, and guarded by bannisters on either side. When, fatigued with the vain attempt to satisfy your doubts as to the safety of this strange structure, your curiosity craves enlightenment as to its uses, I pray you to observe how I would have it peopled. Sliding tumultuously adown the balustrades, lo and behold an innumerable throng of Cherubs in unbroken succession, coming whence and going whither you know not, but each the counterpart of his predecessors, and each flapping his little wings to maintain his balance, rendered precarious as it is by his inability to sit a-straddle. As for the inclined plane itself thus fantastically flanked, you soon perceive that it is the via sacra of many an Ethardo, whom you have known in the flesh or in the spirit—Ethardo, the marvellous gymnast, who mounted and descended steep slopes at the Sydenham Crystal Palace, by trundling inflated balls beneath his feet. Up and down, down and up, some painfully and some skilfully pediculating, your Ethardi pass and repass each other, disorderly yet in order. Name them and salute them as they go by. You have probably more acquaintances among them than I; but I recognise Robinson Crusoe and Count Bismarck, Tarquinius Priscus and Horace Greeley, John Ruskin and Lucrezia Borgia, Mrs. Fry and Edgar Poe, Mr. Gladstone and Dion Boucicault, John Bright and Mrs. Grundy, Ben. Wade and Victor Hugo, Pio Nono and the Great Mogul. Note, too, the various material moulded into circular form, and blown up by way of ambulant footstool; now it is a crown, now a crozier, now a bag of gold, now a wind-bag, now a woman's heart, now a man's fame done up in a newspaper and properly puffed. Ring the changes upon these Ethardi and the motive power that each applies, O my wakeful friend; and at least you may lose sight of your own individuality. Or, take a slide down the banisters with the young Cherubs, and perchance you may touch bottom—in Lethe.
Not so? Let us proceed. There's a man at our Club, whose reputation is so solidly built up, though on an ethereal basis, that I never knew any one presume to question it. He is an absolute master of one accomplishment; unrivalled, and—to the best of my belief, though I can't vouch for the fact—unenvied. Admiring spectators gather round him and applaud; but, if he have ambitious imitators, they rehearse in secret. So far, he does well—ay, with consummate tact and unfailing certainty—what few men can do at all, unless once in a while at dreary intervals, and then by accident. Not to keep you in suspense, which is antagonistic to repose and slumber, this young paragon contrives to throw off his cigar-smoke from his lips, at will, in an unerring series of the most lovely rings or wreaths, which, as they float and rise in tremulous succession, strangely fascinate the looker-on. It may be that this feat is not much of an achievement, morally or physically or intellectually considered. It may be also that the Club does not do itself much honour, in setting so high a value on this performance. But what will you? In the palmy days of Greece, a man acquired a certain celebrity by his precision and address in throwing peas through a needle's eye—the peas being, I presume, much smaller or the needles much larger, than any with which we sow or make soup in these degenerate days. Still, so highly do I appreciate perseverance in the acquirement of any difficult art, that I purpose doing much more for my proficient in smoke, than was done for his man of peas by Philip of Macedon. That bushel of ammunition was a scurvy reward. I confer immortality, by thus registering a fact and hinting a name. And I do this from a sense of gratitude, wherein I trust that you will participate, so soon as you perceive the connection that may surely be traced, between the smoke thus artistically and gracefully jetted into air, and the drowsiness by which you would fain be possessed. Do but imagine a score of your acquaintances round a table, each an adept in this way, and each filling the atmosphere with coronet after coronet of vapour thrown up from meerschaum or cheroot. Whose are the most frequent, whose the most perfect, whose retain their form the longest? Watch the little circlets as they wave and tremble; and award the palm of merit fairly. Nay, even if you tell me that you are innocent of the weed and nauseated by its odour, none the less shall this fantasy be available. I saw once a ship-of-war firing a salute; and lo, from one of the guns went up to the pure sky, in magnified proportions, just such a wreath as those I have described, as delicate yet as clearly defined, and touched withal with a suspicion of prismatic colours as it caught the rays of the sun. An enthusiastic painter might have deemed it an invisible Fairy's aureole; a sentimental milliner would have set it down as the flounce of her unseen robe. Whether the gunner of this occasion had taken a lesson from my friend at the Club, I cannot pretend to decide; I only assure you that I witnessed the phenomenon. You have, therefore, but to multiply as well as magnify. Think of a squadron, a fleet, all the navies of the world, sailing slowly and majestically in unending circuit, as the custom is when they bombard some hapless fort. The saluting is continuous; the movement never ceases; but the big cannon are noiseless now and harmless. Space is joyous with the innumerable wreaths of bluish vapour; but the red slaughter and the accursed tumult of the sea-fight are not heard or seen. Ponder long and lazily, I counsel you, over the evolutions of the ships and the convolutions of the smoke. Those may lure you, possibly, into the Waters of Oblivion; these may spirit you away to the land of the Lotos-Eaters.