…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…

…I can fly. To substantiate my statement, I then climb on to the table or chair, spring off, and, with both feet together, rise to the ceiling, much to my own gratification and the edification of my audience.Bitter, indeed, is my chagrin when I awake and discover that I am as far off flying as ever. Again, many is the time I have dreamed I have been in a huge, empty house, pursued by some grotesque monstrosity that, after chasing me up endless staircases and along the most blood-curdling corridors, has at length cornered me in a gloomy top attic. All seems hopeless, and I am expecting to be caught every second, when, just as the dreadful creature bounds into the room, I leap on to the window-sill and, with a prodigious bound, spring into space. And then, joy of joys, instead of falling, I find I can fly —…

…I dreamed one night I left my material body, which I saw lying stretched before me on the bed, and that after patting it affectionately on the head; I mounted the window-sill and dived head first into the blackness of the night. Down, down, down I went, the cold air whistling and humming about my ears till I thought the drums would burst.Down, down, eternally down, till all became hushed and silent as the grave, and I perceived to my amazement that the earth was fast disappearing in the distance, and that I was rapidly approaching one of the other planets. Dropping gently, I alighted on a tiny hillock, and discovered I was on an islet that lay in the midst of a sparkling, amethyst ocean. All around me were flowers; pink and white roses, pansies, forget-me-nots, carnations, and many others known only in Dreamland. A breeze, laden with…