curtains. The chairs were buxom fat chairs,
anything but spectral, stuffed all over with
flock, and covered with a merry-patterned
chintz, that went down to their feet like
petticoats, making them look like jolly old chair-
women (if the pun will pass) taking their ease.
The room was still fragrant of the scent of
wild flowers, that had come in, on the autumn
breeze, from the fields and woods.

Being tired and sleepy, I soon put out my
candle, and, having drawn up the blind in order
that my eyes, even from bed, might rest on the
deep calm expanse of moonlit sky, I dived
down into the yielding feathery depths of the
great fourposter.

The moon was shining brightly into the room,
lighting up the white bed-furniture. Through
the window, I could see two fir-trees standing
out, sharp and black, against the pure glowing
night sky. Watching them, I saw a little giddy
star rising behind, now glittering in sight like
a gem, now lost from view behind a sombre
bough. It seemed to be playing a game of
hide and seek with me, behind the tree branches,
and to twinkle merrily, when it came out from
a black bit of tree into the sky again. I can't
tell how long I watched that saucy little star:
but it was time enough to be able to calculate
pretty exactly, how long it would take to rise
up through the next branch that would obscure
it. At last I lost my gay little friend behind a
dark mass of foliage, and, seeing that it had
now got into a deep bit of tree that would take
it a good half hour to get through, I reckoned
I would go to sleep.

(My object, I may as well confess, in
parenthesis, in this little paper, is to endeavour
to analyse the growth of a dream, out of
the simply natural into the grotesque. What
I am about to record, of last night, is one
of the very few I have been able to so analyse,
the waking impressions of dreams being
generally so vague and incoherent; but I shall
give it in every particular, as it fixed itself on
my mind when I woke.)

I knew I was going to sleep. I knew, moreover,
presently that I was asleep; but the
moment in which wakefulness merged into
slumber, I have never, on this or any other
occasion, been able to detect. Although
distinctly conscious that I was dreaming, I still saw
my room, and my window, and the fir-trees,
and was still watching for the star to come out
through the bit of tree. I pretended,
however, to myself that I did not know I was
dreaming, and chuckled to think of the deception
I was practising on myself, who thought
I was. I had thus resolved myself into two
distinct personalities. One personality firmly
believing what I saw to be real and material, and
the other personality deriding the idea. But I
myself, the deriding personality, was in my
turn taken in. Looking towards the bottom
of my bed, which I so well knew was only
phantasy, I saw a dreadful dwarf, of whose
unreality I could by no means persuade myself.
I certainly did not then know, nor can I recal
at what point of my dream I first discovered,
that my other and more credulous self was at
that moment having its laugh at me, well
knowing that the dreadful dwarf which alarmed
me was only a distorted mind-picture of a
little comical figure of a man made out of a
lobster-shell, of which I had caught sight
whilst undressing. I had seen him hanging,
by a loop of tape, to a bright nail over the
mantelpiece, when I got into bed.

There, however, stood the dreadful dwarf at
my bed's foot, vivid and plain. The first thing
that made him seem terrible, and at the same
time made me believe in him, was the vague
impression on my mind that I had somewhere
seen him before, but could not for the life of
me tell where. If I had before seen him alive,
I knew he must be real, without a doubt. But
how could I have seen him before, except in
life, or in a previous state of existence? I was
convinced he was a real live being, and the
moment I became so convinced, the horrible thing
demonstrated the fact by rolling its eyes, and
making a chop with its jaws. He was a dreadful
dwarf. His nose and chin were like, and
of the colour of, lobster pincers; his hair was
like the little bristly hair on lobsters' feet; he
had two great antennae, which he swished
about, and eyes at the end of protruding
muscles, which revolved, so that he could see
round a corner. He was a dwarf, understand,
to me, as compared with my natural size, but, in
comparison with the little image of which my
other self knew he was but the picture, he was
a giant of fearful proportions. I suppose it was
these two views of his relative size, as seen by
my two distinct selves, made me so confused as
to his apparent size, as to lead me to think this
terrible being at one moment expanded into a
giant, and the next, contracted into a dwarf
again. Such, at least, was my impression; and
he became very hideous from these sudden
contractions and expansions, like a grotesque
india-rubber nightmare. There was one little detail
about the figure especially annoying to me, for
the simple reason that I could not explain it,
yet it seemed to convince me in some odd way
that he was very real, and no dream fancy. It
was a loop sticking up at the back of his coat.
Now, I argued with myself, this is no creation
of fancy, because no man would ever dream a
coat on a hobgoblin, with a real loop to hang up
that coat by, when it was done with. It seemed
so life-like. My other self knew very well that
loop had no such purpose, that it had a deeper
and probably a deadlier meaning, but could not
recollect what. So the loop passed into a
mystery to my other self, and a subject of awe to
me. A mystery and a subject of awe. Then
I noticed a subtle vapour that was stealing
about the dreadful dwarf, wrapping him round
in wreaths. As he still kept on madly
elongating himself from dwarf to giant, and shrinking
again from giant to dwarf, I noticed the
vapour entirely hid him from sight when he
shrivelled up to his smallest, so that I could no
longer see him as a dwarf, but it only reached
to his knees as a giant. This was a source of
terror, as I always feared he would emerge