Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/78

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who spoke—"those futile troubling necromancies that are wrought by portraits and unfamiliar rooms and mirrors and all time-worn glittering objects—by running waters and the wind's persistency, and by lonely summer noons in forests—how inconsequently they fret upon men's heart-*strings!"

"As if some very feeble force—say, a maimed elf—were trying to attract your attention? Yes, I think I understand. It is droll."

"And how droll, too, it is how quickly we communicate our thoughts—even though, if you notice, you are not really speaking, because your lips are not moving at all."

"No, they never do in dreams. One never seems, in fact, to use one's mouth—you never actually eat anything, you may also notice, in dreams, even though food is very often at hand. I suppose it is because all dream food is akin to the pomegranates of Persephone, so that if you taste it you cannot ever return again to the workaday world. . . . But why, I wonder, are we having the same dream?—it rather savors of Morphean