NOTEBOOK
ways; pleasurably, sadly, offensively, humiliatingly. They
make me cry, they make me laugh, they make me rage,
they make me fight, they make me run, they make me
insult the weak, they make me cringe to the strong, and
swallow the insults of the insulter. And I am always
myself, not that other person who is in me—Watson.
I do actually make immense excursions in my spirit-
ualized person. I go into awful dangers; I am in battles
and trying to hide from the bullets; I fall over cliffs (and
my ^spiritualized body starts). I get lost in caves and
in the corridors of monstrous hotels; I appear before
company in my shirt; I come on the platform with no
subject to talk about, and not a note; I go to unnamable
places, I do unprincipled things; and every vision is vivid,
every sensation—physical as well as moral—is real.
When my physical body dies my dream body will
doubtless continue its excursion and activities without
change, forever.
In my dream last night I was suddenly in the presence
of a negro wench who was sitting in grassy open country,
with her left arm resting on the arm of one of those long
park-sofas that are made of broad slats with cracks be-
tween, and a curve-over back. She was very vivid to me—
round black face, shiny black eyes, thick lips, very white
regular teeth showing through her smile. She was about
22, and plump—not fleshy, not fat, merely rounded and
plump; and good-natured and not at all bad-looking. She
had but one garment on—a coarse tow-linen shirt that
reached from her neck to her ankles without break. She
sold me a pie; a mushy apple pie—hot. She was eating
one herself with a tin teaspoon. She made a disgusting
proposition to me. Although it was disgusting it did not
surprise me—for I was young (I was never old in a dream
yet) and it seemed quite natural that it should come
from her. It was disgusting, but I did not say so; I merely
made a chaffing remark, brushing aside the matter—