But his struggles were in vain; sooner or later the night-
hag would have him by the throat, and pluck him,
strangling and screaming, from his sleep. His dreams
were at times commonplace enough, at times very
strange, at times they were almost formless: he would
be haunted, for instance, by nothing more definite than
a certain hue of brown, which he did not mind in the
least while he was awake, but feared and loathed while
he was dreaming; at times, again, they took on every
detail of circumstance, as when once he supposed he
must swallow the populous world, and awoke screaming
with the horror of the thought. The two chief troubles
of his very narrow existence--the practical and every.
day trouble of school tasks and the ultimate and airy
one of hell and judgment--were often confounded to-
gether into one appalling nightmare. He seemed to
himself to stand before the Great White Throne; he
was called on, poor little devil, to recite some form of
words, on which his destiny depended; his tongue stuck,
his memory was blank, hell gaped for him; and he
would awake, clinging to the curtain-rod with his knees
to his chin.

These were extremely poor experiences, on the whole;
and at that time of life my dreamer would have very
willingly parted with his power of dreams. But pre-
sently, in the course of his growth, the cries and physical
contortions passed away, seemingly for ever; his visions
were still for the most part miserable, but they were
more constantly supported; and he would awake with
no more extreme symptom than a flying heart, a freezing
scalp, cold sweats, and the speechless midnight fear.
His dreams, too, as befitted a mind better stocked with

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