Dreams(梦)

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Dreams

by Jerome K. Jerome

Dreams

The most extraordinary dream I ever had was one in which I fancied

that, as I was going into a theater, the cloak-room attendant stopped me in

the lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me.

I was not surprised; indeed, my acquaintanceship with theater harpies

would prevent my feeling any surprise at such a demand, even in my

waking moments; but I was, I must honestly confess, considerably

annoyed. It was not the payment of the cloak-room fee that I so much

minded--I offered to give that to the man then and there. It was the

parting with my legs that I objected to.

I said I had never heard of such a rule being attempted to be put in

force at any respectable theater before, and that I considered it a most

absurd and vexatious regulation. I also said I should write to The Times

about it.

The man replied that he was very sorry, but that those were his

instructions. People complained that they could not get to and from their

seats comfortably, because other people's legs were always in the way; and

it had, therefore, been decided that, in future, everybody should leave their

legs outside.

It seemed to me that the management, in making this order, had clearly

gone beyond their legal right; and, under ordinary circumstances, I should

have disputed it. Being present, however, more in the character of a

guest than in that of a patron, I hardly like to make a disturbance; and so I

sat down and meekly prepared to comply with the demand.

I had never before known that the human leg did unscrew. I had

always thought it was a fixture. But the man showed me how to undo

them, and I found that they came off quite easily.

The discovery did not surprise me any more than the original request

that I should take them off had done. Nothing does surprise one in a

dream.

I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all

surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I

thought, and to wish me "Good-by!" They all came, and were all very

pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished--not one of them.

Dreams

Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-

naturally-to-be-expected things in the world.

They bore the calamity, besides, with an amount of stoicism that

would have done credit to a Spartan father. There was no fuss, no scene.

On the contrary, an atmosphere of mild cheerfulness prevailed.

Yet they were very kind. Somebody--an uncle, I think--left me a

packet of sandwiches and a little something in a flask, in case, as he said, I

should feel peckish on the scaffold.

It is "those twin-jailers of the daring" thought, Knowledge and

Experience, that teach us surprise. We are surprised and incredulous

when, in novels and plays, we come across good men and women, because

Knowledge and Experience have taught us how rare and problematical is

the existence of such people. In waking life, my friends and relations

would, of course, have been surprised at hearing that I had committed a

murder, and was, in consequence, about to be hanged, because Knowledge

and Experience would have taught them that, in a country where the law is

powerful and the police alert, the Christian citizen is usually pretty

successful in withstanding the voice of temptation, prompting him to

commit crime of an illegal character.

But into Dreamland, Knowledge and Experience do not enter. They

stay without, together with the dull, dead clay of which they form a part;

while the freed brain, released from their narrowing tutelage, steals softly

past the ebon gate, to wanton at its own sweet will among the mazy paths

that wind through the garden of Persephone.

Nothing that it meets with in that eternal land astonishes it because,

unfettered by the dense conviction of our waking mind, that nought

outside the ken of our own vision can in this universe be, all things to it

are possible and even probable. In dreams, we fly and wonder not--

except that we never flew before. We go naked, yet are not ashamed,

though we mildly wonder what the police are about that they do not stop

us. We converse with our dead, and think it was unkind that they did not

come back to us before. In dreams, there happens that which human

language cannot tell. In dreams, we see "the light that never was on sea

or land," we hear the sounds that never yet were heard by waking ears.

Dreams

It is only in sleep that true imagination ever stirs within us. Awake, we

never imagine anything; we merely alter, vary, or transpose. We give

another twist to the kaleidoscope of the things we see around us, and

obtain another pattern; but not one of us has ever added one tiniest piece

of new glass to the toy.

A Dean Swift sees one race of people smaller, and another race of

people larger than the race of people that live down his own streets. And

he also sees a land where the horses take the place of men. A Bulwer

Lytton lays the scene of one of his novels inside the earth instead of

outside. A Rider Haggard introduces us to a lady whose age is a few

years more than the average woman would care to confess to; and pictures

crabs larger than the usual shilling or eighteen-penny size. The number

of so called imaginative writers who visit the moon is legion, and for all

the novelty that they find, when they get there, they might just as well

have gone to Putney. Others are continually drawing for us visions of the

world one hundred or one thousand years hence. There is always a

depressing absence of human nature about the place; so much so, that one

feels great consolation in the thought, while reading, that we ourselves

shall be comfortably dead and buried before the picture can be realized.

In these prophesied Utopias everybody is painfully good and clean and

happy, and all the work is done by electricity.

There is somewhat too much electricity, for my taste, in these worlds

to come. One is reminded of those pictorial enamel-paint advertisements

that one sees about so often now, in which all the members of an extensive

household are represented as gathered together in one room, spreading

enamel-paint over everything they can lay their hands upon. The old

man is on a step-ladder, daubing the walls and ceiling with "cuckoo's-egg

green," while the parlor-maid and the cook are on their knees, painting the

floor with "sealing-wax red." The old lady is doing the picture frames in

"terra cotta." The eldest daughter and her young man are making sly love

in a corner over a pot of "high art yellow," with which, so soon as they

have finished wasting their time, they will, it is manifest, proceed to

elevate the piano. Younger brothers and sisters are busy freshening up

the chairs and tables with "strawberry-jam pink " and "jubilee magenta."

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摘要：

Dreams1DreamsbyJeromeK.JeromeDreams2ThemostextraordinarydreamIeverhadwasoneinwhichIfanciedthat,asIwasgoingintoatheater,thecloak-roomattendantstoppedmeinthelobbyandinsistedonmyleavingmylegsbehindme.Iwasnotsurprised;indeed,myacquaintanceshipwiththeaterharpieswouldpreventmyfeelinganysurpriseatsuchadema...

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