Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/248

 long ages ago, before this world was ushered into being from the fiery vortex of the Sun of suns; we have lived and moved and had a being in a strange and far-off world.

And so we sleep. At other times, without arousing the body, the soul cautiously re-ascends its daily throne, takes advantage of the physical quiescence and slumber, and plays many a fantastic trick with the materials in its magazines,—all for its own amusement and that of its phantasmal comrades and lookers on, who do not fail to gather round the bedside and join the spectral sport. Sometimes it overhauls the sheets of memory, sportively, racily, jocundly, mixes them all together, puts incongruous events alongside of bitter remembrances; takes a character here, and one there, and forces them to perform the most ridiculous and absurd dramas imaginable; nor does imagination itself escape, for the soul touches it, and forthwith it produces, like a fecund mother, and the night-born offspring are forced to mingle themselves in one indescribable medley, along with things of pure memory and reminiscence, thus forming an olla podrida without order, system, head, foot, beginning or end. We are dreaming!