nt Street. How can I express it? You see a skilful actor looking
quietly at you, he pulls a grimace, and lo!--another person. Is it too
extravagant if I tell you that it seemed to me as if Regent Street had,
for the moment, done that? Then, being persuaded it was Regent Street
again, I was oddly muddled about some fantastic reminiscences that cropped
up. "Thirty years ago," thought I, "it was here that I quarrelled with my
brother." Then I burst out laughing, to the astonishment and encouragement
of a group of night prowlers. Thirty years ago I did not exist, and never
in my life had I boasted a brother. The stuff was surely liquid folly, for
the poignant regret for that lost brother still clung to me. Along
Portland Road the madness took another turn. I began to recall vanished
shops, and to compare the street with what it used to be. Confused,
troubled thinking is comprehensible enough after the drink I had taken,
but what puzzled me were these curiously vivid phantasm memories that had
crept into my mind, and not only the memories that had crept in, but also
the memories that had slipped out. I stopped opposite Stevens', the
natural history dealer's, and cudgelled my brains to think what he had to
do with me. A 'bus went by, and sounded exactly like the rumbling of a
train. I seemed to be dipping into some dark, remote pit for the
recollection. "Of course," said I, at last, "he has promised me three
frogs to-morrow. Odd I should have forgotten."

Do they still show children dissolving views? In those I remember one view
would begin like a faint ghost, and grow and oust another. In just that
way it seemed to me that a ghostly set of new sensations was struggling
with those of my ordinary self.

I went on through Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, puzzled, and a
little frightened, and scarcely noticed the unusual way I was taking, for
commonly I used to cut through the intervening network of back streets. I
turned into University Street, to discover that I had forgotten my number.
Only by a strong effort did I recall 11A, and even then it seemed to me
that it was a thing some forgotten person had told me. I tried to steady
my mind by recalling the incidents of the dinner, and for the life of me I
could conjure up no picture of my host's face; I saw him only as a shadowy
outline, as one might see oneself reflected in a window through which one
was looking. In his place, however, I had a curious exterior vision of
myse