…young man once told me that he dreamed a huge shaggy bear, with an intensely diabolical expression in its little brown eyes, entered his room, and) approaching the foot of his bed, reared itself on its hind legs and peered at him. In a great state of alarm, he got out of bed, and had almost reached the window-sill, when the bear stalked up to him, and, placing its paws on his shoulders, deliberately breathed into his face. He awoke with its hot breath burning into his brain, and from that night, he assured me, he was a changed man; and, one bad act leading to another, he was at length smuggled out of the country to escape jail.A destitute girl I once befriended on the Thames Embankment, and who, in return for the supper I gave her at a neighbouring restaurant, stole the teaspoons, told me she was quite…

…wood! Through the wood! Beware of the huntsman in the green hood!” struck the animal across the neck with her whip and was off like an arrow, whilst the sound of her words “Through the wood I through the wood!” etc., echoed and re-echoed through the still night air till every stone, and stick, and blade of grass seemed to take it and bellow it in my ears. It was in vain I tried to mount and follow. Every time I tried to get my foot in the stirrup, the beast slipped away from me, and I narrowly escaped a tumble. At last, in desperation, I made a frantic rush, but my steed melted into nothingness, and the next moment I found myself racing through the spinney in hot pursuit of my wayward companion. On and on I tore but no sign of the horse and its rider, only the…