Fourth Essay- William Dean Howells -I Talk of Dreams

1. William Dean Howells- I talk of dreams

2. I believe the writer used a vivid description to describe the first paragraph. BUT it is mostly my own dreams I talk of, and that will somewhat excuse me for talking of dreams at all. Everyone knows how delightful the dreams are that one dreams one’s self, and how insipid the dreams of others are. I had an illustration of the fact, not many evenings ago, when a company of us got telling dreams. I had by far the best dreams of any; to be quite frank, mine were the only dreams worth listening to; they were richly imaginative, delicately fantastic, exquisitely whimsical, and humorous in the last degree; and I wondered that when the rest could have listened to them they were always eager to cut in with some silly, senseless, tasteless thing that made me sorry and ashamed for them. I shall not be going too far if I say that it was on their part the grossest betrayal of vanity that I ever witnessed.

3.But the egotism of some people concerning their dreams is almost incredible

4. The writer speaks about how egotistic persons talk about their dreams and the vanity it produces. He then goes on to talk about his dreams about school and God , Adam and Eve. The whole story was a confusing one at that so I did not fully understand the whole concept that the writer was trying to produce. He jumped around from subject to subject and , like a dream was not clear and cannot remember what he was talking about by the end of the essay.

5. I am rather proud of that dream; it is really my battlehorse among dreams, and I think I will ride away on it. The author used a quotation to finish his story.

6. The conclusion was like the story, very confusing and tough to decifer for anyone reading this. I tried to take my time to understand what he was trying to point out but its very complex for me. For exampl this was said:"Then, suddenly, I was not consul at Venice, and had not been, but consul at Delhi, in India; and the distress I felt would all end in a splendid Oriental phantasmagory of elephants and native princes, with their retinues in procession, which I suppose was mostly out of my reading of De Quincey. This dream, with no variation that I can recall, persisted till I broke it up by saying, in the morning after it had recurred, that I had dreamed that dream again; and so it began to fade away, coming less and less frequently, and at last ceasing altogether.