Thus far the author: unconscious that he had fallen into the serious error of confounding the affective with the intellectual faculties, and not appearing to understand that, whereas an affective faculty can be brought into conscious action by independent circumstances, an intellectual faculty requires a direct mental effort before it is excited. His essay was not convincing. He wandered off at tangents; laid down a theory, and, proceeding to establish it, so entangled himself that he lost its connecting threads; and had evidently been unable to properly think out a subject which is not entirely unworthy of consideration. However, he had written his book, and it got into Dan's hands and into Dan's head. Joshua did not understand it a bit, and said so; and when he asked Dan to explain it, Dan could scarcely fit words to what was in his mind.

"Although I cannot explain it very clearly, I can understand it," said Dan. "He means to say that a person can see with his mental sight" -

"That is, with his eyes shut," interrupted Joshua jocularly.

"Certainly, with his eyes shut," said Dan very decidedly. "Our eyes are shut when we dream, yet we see things." Joshua became serious immediately; the answer was a convincing one. "And that proves that we have two senses of sight-one in the eyes, the other in the mind. Haven't you seen rings, and circles, and clouds when you are in bed at night, and before you go to sleep? I can press my face on the pillow and say-not out loud, and yet I say it and can hear it-which shows that all our senses are double." (In his eagerness to explain what he could scarcely comprehend, Dan was in danger of falling into the same error as the author of the "Triumph of Mind over Matter" had fallen into, that of flying off at tangents: it was with difficulty he could keep to his subject.) "Well, Jo, I press my head into the pillow, and say, 'I will see rings,' and presently I see a little ball, black, perhaps, and it grows and grows into rings-like what you see when you throw a stone in the water-larger, and larger, all the different colors of the rainbow; and then, when they have grown so large as to appear to have lost themselves in space-just like the rings in the water, Jo-another little ball shapes itself in the dark, and gradually becomes visible, and then the rings come and grow and disappear as the others did. When I have seen enough, I say-not out loud again, Jo, but silently as I did before-'I don't want to see any more,' and they don't come again. What I can do with rings, I can do with clouds. I say, 'I will see clouds,' and they come, all colors of blue, from white-blue to black-blue; sometimes I see sunsets."

"I have seen them too, Dan," said Joshua; "I have seen skies with stars in them, just as I have seen them with my eyes wide open."

"Now, if we can do this," continued Dan, "why cannot we do more?"

"We can't do what he says in this book," said Joshua, drumming with his fingers on the "Philosophy of Dreams."

"I don't know. Why should he write all that unless he knew something? There is no harm in trying, at all events. Let me see. Here is a chart of a head, Jo turning to a diagram in the book. Where is combativeness? Oh! here, at the back of the head, behind the ear. Can you feel it, Jo? Is it a large bump? No; you are going too high up, I am sure. Now you are too much in the middle. Ah! that's the place, I think."

These last sentences referred to Joshua's attempt to find Dan's organ of combativeness.

"I don't feel any thing particular, Dan," he said.

"But you feel something, don't you, Jo?" asked Dan anxiously. "There is a bump there, isn't there?"

"A very little one," answered Joshua, earnestly manipulating Dan's head, and pressing the bump. "Do you feel spiteful?"

"No," said Dan, laughing.

"There's a bump twice as large just above your fighting one."

"What is that bump?" said Dan, examining the diagram again. "Ah that must be adhesiveness."

"I don't know what that means."

"Give me the dictionary;" and Dan with eager fingers turned over the pages of an old Walker's Dictionary. "'Adhesive-sticking, tenacious,'" he read. "That is, that I stick to a thing, as I mean to do to this. Now I'll tell you what we'll do, Jo. I shall sleep at your house to-morrow night, and when I am asleep, you shall press my organ of combativeness-put your fingers on it-yes, there; and when I wake I will tell you what I have dreamed of."

"All right," said Joshua, removing his fingers.

"You will be able to find the place again?"

"Yes, Dan."

"And you will be sure to keep awake?"

"Sure, Dan."

The following night, Joshua waited very patiently until Dan was asleep. He had to wait a long time; for Dan, in consequence of his anxiety, was longer than usual getting to sleep. Once or twice Joshua thought that his friend was in the Land of Nod, and he commenced operations, but he was interrupted by Dan saying drowsily, "I am not asleep yet, Jo." At length Dan really went off, and then Joshua, very quietly and with great care, felt for Dan's organ of combativeness, and pressed it. Joshua looked at his sleeping friend with anxiety. "Perhaps he will hit out at me," he thought. But Dan lay perfectly still, and Joshua, after waiting and watching in vain for some indication of the nature of Dan's sleeping fancies, began to feel very sleepy himself, and went to bed. In the morning, when they were both awake, Joshua asked what Dan had dreamed of.

"I can't remember," said Dan, rubbing his eyes.

"I pressed your combativeness for a long time, Dan," said Joshua; "and I pressed it so hard that I was almost afraid you would hit out."

"I didn't, did I?"

"No; you were as still as a mouse."

"I dreamed of something, though," said Dan, considering. "Oh, I remember! I dreamed of you, So; you were standing on a big ship, with a big telescope in your hand. You had no cap on, and your hair was all flying about."

"Were there any sailors on the ship?"

"A good many."

"Did you quarrel with any of them?"

"I didn't dream of myself at all."

"Did any of the sailors quarrel with me?"

"There wasn't any quarrelling, Jo, that I can remember."

"So you see," said Joshua, "that it is all fudge."

"I don't see that at all. Now I think of it, it isn't likely that I should dream of quarrelling with any one or fighting with any one when I was dreaming of you, Jo."

"Or perhaps you haven't any combativeness, Dan."

"Perhaps I haven't. It wouldn't be of much use to me if I had, for I shouldn't know how to fight."

"Or perhaps your combativeness is so small that it won't act," said Joshua sportively.

"Don't joke about it, Jo," said Dan. "You don't know how serious I am, and how disappointed I feel at its being a failure. Will you try it again to-night?"

Joshua, seeing that Dan was very much in earnest, readily promised; and the experiment was repeated that night, with the same result. After that the subject dropped for a time.

But if Dan's organ of adhesiveness-which, phrenologically, means affection, friendship, attachment-was large, it was scarcely more powerful than his organ of concentrativeness. His love for Joshua was perfect. He knew that Joshua's choice of a pursuit would separate him from his friend. When he said to Joshua, "I shall live in you, Jo," the words conveyed the expression of no light feeling, but of a deep earnest longing and desire to be always with his friend-to be always with him, although oceans divided them. If no misfortune had befallen him, if his limbs had been sound and his body strong, Dan would have been intellectually superior to boys in the same station of life as himself. Debarred as he was from their amusements, their anxieties, and their general ways of life he was thrown, as it were, upon his intellect for consolation. It brought him, by the blessing of God, such consolation that his misfortune might have been construed into a thing to be coveted. There is good in every thing.

All Dan's sympathies were with Joshua. Dan admired him for his determination, for his desire to be better than his fellows. It was Dan who first declared that Joshua was to be a hero; and Joshua accepted Dan's dictum with complacency. It threw a halo of romance around his determination not to be a wood-turner, and not to do as his father had done before him. The reader, from these remarks, or the incidents that follow, may now or presently understand why the wildly-vague essay on the "Philosophy of Dreams; or the Triumph of Mind over Matter," took Dan's mind prisoner and so infatuated him.

Referring to the book again, after the failure of the experiments upon his organ of combativeness, Dan found a few simple directions by which the reader could test, in a minor degree, the power of the mind over the sleeping body. One of the most simple was this: A person, before he goes to sleep, must resolutely make up his mind to wake at a certain hour in the morning. He must say to himself, "I want to wake at five o'clock-at five o'clock-at five o'clock; I will awake at five o'clock-I will-I will-I will!" and continue to repeat the words and the determination over and over again until he fell asleep, with the resolve firmly fixed in his mind. If you do this, said the writer, you will awake at five o'clock. Dan tried this experiment the same night-and failed. He repeated it the following night, and the night following that, with the same result. His sleep was disturbed, but that was all. But on the fourth night matters were different. Five o'clock was the hour Dan fixed upon, and nothing was more certain than that on the fourth night Dan woke up at the precise moment. There were two churches in the immediate neighborhood, and, as he woke, Dan heard the first church-bell toll the hour. One, two, three, four, five. Each stroke of the bell was followed by a dismal hum of woful tribulation. Then the other church-bell struck the hour, and each stroke of that was followed by a cheerful ring, bright and crisp and clear. Dan smiled and hugged himself, and went to sleep again, cherishing wild hopes which he dared not confess even to himself. He tried the experiment on the following night, fixing on a different time, half-past three. Undaunted by that and many other failures, he tried again and again, until one night he awoke when it was dark. He waited anxiously to hear the clocks strike. It seemed to be a very long half-hour, but the church-bell struck at last. One, two, three, four. With a droning sound at the end of each stroke, as if a myriad bees, imprisoned in a cell, were giving vent to a long-sustained and simultaneous groan of entreaty to be set free; or as if the bell were wailing for the hour that was dead. Then the joyous church-bell struck One, two, three, four. A wedding-peal in each stroke; sparkling, although invisible, like stars in a clear sky on a frosty night.

Dan went to sleep, almost perfectly happy.

He repeated his experiment every night, until he had a very nearly perfect command over sleep as far as regarded time, and could wake almost at any hour he desired. Then he took a forward step. While playing with his birds he said, "To-night I will dream of you." But the thought intervened that he had often dreamed of the birds and that to dream of them that night would not be very remarkable. So he said, "No, I will not dream of the birds that are living; I will dream of Golden Cloud." It was a long time now since Golden Cloud had been buried, but Dan had never forgotten his pet. When he went to bed he said, "I will dream of Golden Cloud-a pleasant dream." And he dwelt upon his wish, and expressed it in words, again and again. That night he dreamed of Golden Cloud, and of its pretty tricks; of its growing old and shaky; of its death and burial. Then he saw something that he had never seen before. He saw it lying quite contented and happy at the bottom of its flower-pot coffin, and when he chirruped to it, it chirruped in return.

He told his dream to Joshua.

"I have dreamed of Golden Cloud a good many times," said Joshua.

"But I made up my mind especially to dream of Golden Cloud," said Dan, "and I dreamed of it the same night. At other times, my dreaming of it was not premeditated. It came in the usual way of dreams."

"What do you want me to believe from all this Dan?

"That, as the author of that book says, you can dream of any thing you wish. I scarcely dare believe that I shall be able to dream of what I shall most desire by and by. By and by, Jo," he repeatedly sadly, "when you and me are parted."

Joshua threw his arms around Dan's neck.

"And you are doing all this, dear Dan, because you want to dream of me?"

"And because I want to be with you, Jo, and to see things that you see, and never, never to be parted from you." The wistful tears ran down Dan's cheek as he said these words.

"It would be very wonderful," said Joshua; "almost too wonderful. And I shall think, 'Dan is here with me, although I cannot see him.'"

"Listen again to what he says, Jo," said Dan, opening the "Triumph of Mind over Matter." "A person can so command and control his mental forces as to train himself to dream of events that are actually taking place at a distance from him, at the precise moment they occur."

"And that is what you want to do when I am away, Dan."

"That is what I want to do when you are away, dear Jo."

"I am positive you can't do it."

"Why? I dreamed of Golden Cloud when I wanted to."

"I can understand that. But how did you dream of Golden Cloud, Dan? You dreamed of him as if he was alive" -

"At first I did; but afterwards I saw him in the flower-pot, dead."

"And Golden Cloud chirruped to you?"

"Yes, Jo."

"Think again, Dan. Golden Cloud was dead, and Golden Cloud chirruped to you!"

"Yes, Jo," faltered Dan, beginning to understand the drift of Joshua's remarks.

"That is not dreaming of things as they are, Dan," said Joshua gently, taking Dan's hand and patting it. "If you could dream of Golden Cloud as he is now, you would see nothing of him but a few bones-feathers and flesh all turned to clay. Not a chirrup in him, Dan dear, not a chirrup!"

Dan covered his eyes with his hand, and the tears came through his fingers, But he soon recovered himself.

"You are right, Jo," he said: "yet I'm not quite wrong. The man who wrote that book knew things, depend upon it. He was not a fool. I was, to think I could do such wonders in so short a time."

Dan showed, in the last sentence, that he did not intend to relinquish his desire. He said nothing more about it, however, and in a few minutes the pair of bullfinches were on the table in a little cage, whistling, "Rule, Britannia," the high notes of which one of the birds took with consummate ease.