There is a real difficulty, moreover, in ensuring that the first action of the mind on awaking from sleep is concentrated on recalling the dream and on nothing else. No other thought must be allowed a foothold until this has been done. To ensure success other ideas must be excluded; for at the moment when the mind is still only half released from the influence of sleep it will naturally turn instantly to whatever has been the preoccupation of the previous day. If we have gone to sleep intent on some specially absorbing thought, that thought, unless kept in check, is sure to come between us and the dream, and to efface the recollection of it, however vivid it may have been. The memory of the clearest dream will not survive for more than a moment the intrusion of such a dominant waking thought; almost instantaneously the dream impression is destroyed. The best way that I know to guard against this, and to make sure of recapturing it, is to determine firmly overnight that nothing shall be allowed to intervene, and that the dream - whatever its nature - shall be recalled directly we wake.

The command thus given overnight will under ordinary circumstances be obeyed without difficulty, and the dream scenes can be retraced.

There are, however, some conditions which make it much harder to achieve this success. If the thought that fills the mind by day is an unusually absorbing or anxious one, it will actually awaken us from sleep by its insistence, and then no resolution made over-night will suffice to quell it or to put it on one side. When we are awakened in this manner, it may be practically impossible to remember the dream, and its memory will probably elude us.

Sometimes also when I have tried very vigorously to remember a dream the impression of which is nebulous, only certain detached floating fragments of it will come back. Dimly I remember something of it. I have a recollection of skating; of swift movement on the dark surface of a frozen river. A recollection of tall trees overhanging the ice comes back only to fade away again like a "dissolving view," and, in the effort to hold fast the memory that slips away so quickly, I have fallen into an error that I find to be always a fatal one if a dream is to be remembered; I have repeated to myself in words - not aloud, but mentally - "I was skating on the frozen river, tall trees were arched having been conceived in words, instead of seeing overhead-----" but then immediately, the thought the dream scene as a picture, I see in front of me the words visualised and written as it were before my eyes. They may be written in black letters on a white background, or in white letters on a dark ground, but they effectually blot out the dream that I should be watching.

The words may next begin to repeat themselves vocally in the ear of the mind as a tune repeats itself and "runs in one's head." Directly the mind vocalises or visualises words in this way they always oust the pictured scenes of the dream, and I know by experience that these are irrevocably lost and that no effort will recapture them.

There are certain classes of dreams which are not easy to record, however soon one may try to write them down. I mean the dreams in which the dreamer passes from one personality into another. Just as a magic lantern picture fades away on the screen and another instantly takes its place, so our actual individuality changes into another, and so also does the individuality of the other actors in the dream. A. starts with me, but B. insensibly takes his place. I may not even know when the change has happened, and though the dream may work out into a coherent and rational story, the dreamer may in the course of it be two or three persons with different histories, characters and associations. The scene and surroundings of the dream may also change in the same fashion: my Wiltshire home fades into the semblance of another house, a house whose threshold I have not crossed for twenty years, and it in turn may give place to the unfamiliar rooms of a strange mansion that I have never seen. How can we retrace and record all these changes? above all when the dream itself shifts, and a second dream, wholy distinct, which I will call the "B" dream, is superimposed on the first; the "B" dream running side by side with the "A" dream.

Sometimes the "B" dream is the stronger and takes the place of the other; it is then the one that it is easiest to remember in the morning, but sometimes the "B" dream, after persisting for a time, fades out and the "A" dream may be carried on. Sometimes also, after a very brief waking time, if one falls asleep again, the "B" dream having disappeared, the "A" dream starts afresh from the point where it left off.

It is always very difficult to recall or to describe these changes. In all these cases I think that our notes of dreams must be made very promptly and, except in very clear-cut and well-defined dreams, some blanks must of necessity be left where recollection breaks down or becomes hazy. The following is such a note:

I was sitting in an arm-chair turning over the leaves of a largish book. Its pages were square in shape and showed a wide margin, especially at the top of each page where title headings were printed; the book was printed in very clear black type. I turned over the pages and saw that it contained three stories -"All rather morbid subjects," I thought - and as I read on my dream changed and I became one of the characters in the first story. It was about a husband and a wife and was rather a prosy narrative, but I remember little of the events of it or of the part I played in it, for I thought it dull, and in my capacity as reader I turned over the pages to read the second story.

This was concerned with a murder - a murder that had taken place before the story opened. The man who had committed it was convinced, for reasons that seemed to him wholly adequate, that he was guiltless, and merited no blame for what he had done. I slipped then and there into the person of this man. I remember passionately justifying to myself and to God the righteousness of the act that I had committed. I never felt more certain of anything in my life than I felt then, that my conscience was clear of guilt, and that the dreadful deed that I had done had been right. It was all intensely real to me. I remembered the murderer's haunted journey described in "Oliver Twist." "People who write about a murderer's mind can know very! little about it," I thought. Again I turned over a page - "Oh, but these stories are very morbid," I was saying when I woke.

In another of these dreams of changing identity I found myself in the big class-room of a higher elementary school in London. Children were sitting all round me at their desks, and I was a poor child like the rest, newly admitted from a lower grade school, and feeling very forlorn and shy. I thought that they all knew more than I did and had more confidence in themselves. I was sitting unoccupied at my desk, a copy open in front of me, and books. No one had given me directions what to do, and I began to write the "copy," but the letters that I wrote were so badly formed that I felt ashamed, and looked instead into the books. After a time the headmaster came to me and asked how I "had employed the last hour." Alas! I had nothing to show. "Ah!" he said, "that is our little test to see how far you can organise your own work, and use your time." "But you didn't tell me," I said, "and it's my first day." He smiled in a superior way and began to give a lesson to the class. "Where do you all live!" he asked in the course of it. "Hammersmith," said one child, "Chelsea," said another. "Wootton Bas-sett," said I, and I thought they all smiled. "I am not nearly as. grand as they are," I thought. "They are all very superior to me." The class was then summoned to go out, and the headmaster led us for a long walk, taking us, as he said, for an "educational expedition" to see the beautiful old library of one of the Inns of Court.

The ancient room had lately been redecorated with modern wooden panelling, and the master explained in his professional manner, how beautifully it had been done, and at how great a cost. I could see at once that the panelling was rather poor, of the wrong period for the room, and made of indifferent wood. "Does he really think that good?" I asked in a low voice of my neighbour. With this attitude of criticism I ceased to be the school-child and became my own self. I then recognised with a little dismay that the person to whom I had made my whispered criticism was one of the judges of the High Court, who must, it flashed across my mind, probably have been one of those who was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the choice of the panelling. "What a 'gaffe' I have made," I thought; but he was a very charming judge, and he only laughed and said,"It was thought rather good at the time." "But isn't it like the dull decorations inside the House of Commons?" I suggested. "Yes," he replied, rather ruefully, "I suppose it is, but I believe we made your husband subscribe to it, for he was a member of this Inn, you know." "I expect you did," I said, and as we sat talking I noticed that the panels in question were really only of deal, but cunningly "grained," so as to look like old oak.

The schoolmaster was standing near and, as I felt a distaste for his explanations, and was attracted by the crowd, I wandered away and mingled with the other guests who filled the rooms. I was now wearing a rose-coloured dress of silk that fell in full folds to my feet; it seemed to me beautiful and stately, but very unlike the sheath-like fashionable dresses that other women were wearing. "I haven't worn a rose-coloured dress for years and years," I thought; "no wonder this is old-fashioned, it must have been lying by so long!" "You must come back with us at once," said the schoolmaster, coming up from behind me; and instantly I had turned into the child again in its short, shabby brown frock, hating going back with the other children, hating the long tiresome walk back to school. The Temple Gardens had changed into a wide common, and I skipped round various big clumps of brambles, edging away as far as I could from the master's flow of improving talk. The child's mind was mine again, and mine was the child's rather scornful attitude towards all "grand" attire. "I couldn't possibly have skipped like this in that long pink dress," I thought.

I have often written down a dream when I have waked at a very early morning hour. After a while I have slept again, and on re-awakening have found that almost all recollection of the dream that I had previously recorded had so faded that I could recall only the barest outlines of it. The record of even the shortest most vivid dreams must therefore be made immediately on first awakening. The following is such a note of an early morning dream:

June, 1913.