Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1911 — IN THE MATTER OF DREAMS [ARTICLE]

IN THE MATTER OF DREAMS

Writer Rebels Against Universal Df*>~ tum That They Must Never Be . Related. In the house in which I was brought up, there was a rule that dream# should not be told at the breakfast table—a rule which, to my mind,, robbed the meal of its only possiblo Interest. I still remember an impression of the lawn massed with yellow lions which I desired particularly to> share. The table was a large onat, seating three generations, ana I gained the Idea it was on account off the prophetic character of the dream* of a certain great-aunt that the prohibition was so rigorously enforced. Bat, I know better now.'' We were forbidden to tell our dreams because dream* —even more than the love of William Blake —“never may be told.” Thexi are among the incommunicable me* periences. Juat as a young painter Ja| taught not to portray a luminary on canvas, so a child must be taught not, to describe its dreams. Better relate the dullest true story than the most thrilling dream. Is it that our audiences are so in Jove with reality? I*, it that the isolation of a dream, whidn may neither be shared nor re-acted., leaves the listener’s egotism cold? jL do not know, but at the mere words,. "I dreamt,” you may see your auditor’sattention dissolve—neither at his win nor your own—like mist before thm sun. Now, is not this strange, when yen consider how deeply dreams color tbw days of even the sanest of us; how in dreams we commune with the dead, love strimgers, marry our enemies., fight and die; have, in short, all thaadventures of life in ite most poignant moods? Yet not even our merest and dearest will lend us their ears. Do we merely need more art? Most we- seek only some method to hoi# that dissolving attention until the fnIB radiance of the vision can be? sketched out? Or most we all improve in a sort of psychological imagination? Or Is it, as I am Inclined t» think, that something inherent in tbw experience itself makes It remote, an# that as we must die alone, so we musk dream alone too?—From “Point «# View," in Scribner’s.