Note 99 — Chapter VII

I may, perhaps, observe, after giving two dreams which have to do with mathematical operations, that, though I was very fond of them in my college days, I have long ceased to occupy myself with these processes. I would add, by way of redeeming my dream-intelligence from a deserved charge of silliness, that I once performed a respectable intellectual feat when asleep. I put together the riddle, "What might a wooden ship say when her side was stove in? Tremendous!" (Tree-mend-us). I was aware of having tried to improve on the form of this pun. I am happy to say I am not given to punning during waking life, though I had a fit of it once. It strikes me that punning, consisting as it does essentially of overlooking sense and attending to sound, is just such a debased kind of intellectual activity as one might look for in sleep.