d much prefer to remain quietly in bed, and I
tell him so. But he insists on my getting up at once and coming down to
the theatre. I explain to him that I can't act a bit. He seems to
consider this unimportant, and says, "Oh, that will be all right." We
argue for a while, but he makes the matter quite a personal one, and to
oblige him and get him out of the bedroom I consent, though much against
my own judgment. I generally dress the character in my nightshirt,
though on one occasion, for Banquo, I wore pyjamas, and I never remember
a single word of what I ought to say. How I get through I do not know.
Irving comes up afterwards and congratulates me, but whether upon the
brilliancy of my performance, or upon my luck in getting off the stage
before a brickbat is thrown at me, I cannot say.

Whenever I dream this incident I invariably wake up to find that the
bedclothes are on the floor, and that I am shivering with cold; and it is
this shivering, I suppose, that causes me to dream I am wandering about
the Lyceum stage in nothing but my nightshirt. But still I do not
understand why it should always be the Lyceum.

Another dream which I fancy I have dreamt more than once--or, if not, I
have dreamt that I dreamt it before, a thing one sometimes does--is one
in which I am walking down a very wide and very long road in the East End
of London. It is a curious road to find there. Omnibuses and trams pass
up and down, and it is crowded with stalls and barrows, beside which men
in greasy caps stand shouting; yet on each side it is bordered by a strip
of tropical forest. The road, in fact, combines the advantages of Kew
and Whitechapel.

Some one is with me, but I cannot see him, and we walk through the
forest, pushing our way among the tangled vines that cling about our
feet, and every now and then, between the giant tree-trunks, we catch
glimpses of the noisy street.

At the end of this road there is a narrow turning, and when I come to it
I am afraid, though I do not know why I am afraid. It leads to a house
that I once lived in when a child, and now there is some one waiting
there who has something to tell me.

I turn to run away. A Blackwall 'bus is passing, and I try to overtake
it. But the horses turn into skeletons and gallop away from me, and my
feet are like lead, and the thing that is with me, and that I cannot see,
seizes me by the arm and drags me back.

It forces me along, and into the house, and t