The only other tendency to a recurring dream that I have ever noticed was in the course of the long illness of which I have written elsewhere; my dreams were invariably pleasant and agreeable at that time; but I constantly had the experience in the course of them of seeing something of a profound blackness.  Sometimes it was a man in a cloak, sometimes an open door with an intensely black space within, sometimes a bird, like a raven or a crow; oftenest of all it took the shape of a small black cubical box, which lay on a table, without any apparent lid or means of opening it.  This I used to take up in my hands, and find very heavy; but the predominance of some intensely black object, which I have never experienced before or since, was too marked to be a mere coincidence; and I have little doubt that it was some obscure symptom of my condition, and had some definite physical cause.  Indeed, at the same time, I was occasionally aware of the presence of something black in waking hours, not a thing definitely seen, but existing dimly in a visual cell.  After I recovered, this left me, and I have never seen it since.

These are the more coherent kind of dreams; but there is another kind of a vaguely anxious character, which consist of endless attempts to catch trains, or to fulfil social engagements, and are full of hurry and dismay.  Or one dreams that one has been condemned to death for some unknown offence, and the time draws near; some little while ago I spent the night under these circumstances interviewing different members of the Government in a vain attempt to discover the reasons for my condemnation; they could none of them give me a specific account of the affair, and could only politely deplore that it was necessary to make an example.  “Depend upon it,” said Mr. Lloyd-George to me, “Substantial justice will be done!” “But that is no consolation to me,” I said.  “No,” he replied kindly, “it would hardly amount to that!”

But out of all this there emerges the fact that after a vivid dream, one’s memory is full of pictures of things seen quite as distinctly, indeed often more distinctly, than in real life.  I have a clearer recollection of certain dream-landscapes than I have of many scenes actually beheld with the eye; and this sets me wondering how the effect is brought about, and how the memory is enabled to store what appears to be a visual impression, by some reflex action of the nerves of sight.

Then there is the second point, that of the lively emotions stirred by dreams.  It would really appear that there must be two distinct personalities at work, without any connection between them, one unconsciously inventing and the other consciously observing.  I dreamed not long ago that I was walking beside the lake at Riseholme, the former palace of the bishops of Lincoln, where I often went as a child.  I saw that the level of the lake had sunk, and that there was a great bank of shingle between the water