Joshua Marvel. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

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СКАЧАТЬ "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 СКАЧАТЬ