25 August 1900

 

I woke too late this morning to do any proper work.  I write only in the mornings - the early light flatters the imagination, just as the evening light flatters the complexion.  This journal is, in any event, quite exhausting my powers of invention - having written about London yesterday morning, I was compelled to dream about it all last night.

      I was trapped in some flat, phantasmagoric nightmare.  I was standing in Leicester Square, but the ground was curiously paved.  The electric lights which had once so entranced me by the Thames seemed harsh and monstrously large: they flickered above the square and all at once I felt myself jostled by a crowd of men and women in ugly, bright clothes.  I looked up, and I saw that remarkable advertisement for the Alexandra dentifrice - but the Princess moved and spoke to me.  It was quite horrid, and rather frightening, as if a chromolithograph had acquired the powers of motion.  I shall at once report the incident to the Society for Psychical Research.