I have often dreamed complete tales, and, oddly enough, the scene of my tale-dream is, more often than not, in Hyde Park. I append the following by way of illustration. I dreamed it was a wet night, and that I saw, sitting alone on a seat in Hyde Park, with the rain falling mercilessly on her head and shoulders, and forming a large puddle in her lap, a woman — a silent, white-faced woman, that might well have passed for a corpse, or for a typical phantasm of the dead. I was so struck with the sight that I involuntarily stopped, and, advancing towards her, enquired if she were ill.The sound of my voice made her start, and, shaking the water from her dress with a dull, mechanical movement, she said reproachfully, ”Why can’t folks let me alone? You are the third who has spoken to me within the…

…way in this manner, when I suddenly saw, stretched across our track, a white coffin which rose up on end, and shook off its lid, and disclosed to my startled eyes a man, clad from head to foot in red tights. Stepping out from his prison, he placed his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly, whereupon the scene once more changed and I found myself back again in the forest, sitting at the foot of a huge, black tree, with the red man opposite me. “You are fond of music? He said,” Then listen!” and placing a flute to his lips, he blew. The most ghastly, the most hellish of noises rang through the forest, and, ere my shocked senses had time to recover I found myself once again in motion — this time on my own legs — with all the trees, headed by the red man, in…