Once, on a very windy night, and when, perhaps, suffering a trifling disturbance of health--for there was slight pleurodynic pain the next morning--I dreamed I was quietly at home with friends, when suddenly the sky became illuminated. We found that this was due to steady and continuous lightning, a state of things which remained throughout the dream, the sky presenting the appearance of a cracked and crushed sheet of melting ice.[64] By and by, fragments of buildings and similar debris were whirled past in the air, and I caught sight of a woman driven above me by her skirts. We now realised the imminent approach of a terrific cyclone which, at any moment, might carry the house and ourselves away. I remembered no more.
Yet another dream may be mentioned as likewise directly due to a violent storm and the rattling of a window near my bed. The latter sound evidently recalled to sleeping consciousness the sound of the rattling window of a railway train, and I dreamed that I was travelling to Berlin with a medical friend. There were the accompaniments, not unfamiliar in dreams, of rushing along interminable platforms, and up and down endless stairs, finding myself in a carriage of the wrong class, with, in consequence, more wandering along corridors, and finally finding that my friend had been left behind. The character of the dream may have been influenced by slight indigestion. In this dream, unlike those already recorded as due to external stimuli, the elements of the dream were not the pure invention of dreaming imagination, but compacted entirely of ideas that had been recently familiar.
The following dream was due to an auditory stimulus of different character. I dreamed that I was listening to a performance of Haydn's _Creation_, the orchestral part of the performance seeming to consist chiefly of the very realistic representation of the song of birds, though I could not identify the note of any particular bird. Then followed solos by male singers, whom I saw, especially one who attracted my attention by singing at the close in a scarcely audible voice. On awakening, the source of the dream was not immediately obvious, but I soon realised that it was the song of a canary in another room. I had never heard Haydn's _Creation_, except in fragments, nor thought of it at any recent period; its reputation as regards the realistic representation of natural sounds had evidently caused it to be put forward by sleeping consciousness as a plausible explanation of the sounds heard, and the visual centres had accepted the theory.