CHAPTER XXVII.
CONCERNING THE TROUBLES AND THE SHAPES THAT BEGAN TO GATHER ABOUT DOCTOR STURK.
It was just about that time that our friend, Dr.Sturk, had two or three odd dreams that secretly acted disagreeably upon his spirits.

His liver he thought was a little wrong, and there was certainly a little light gout sporting about him.

His favourite 'pupton,' at mess, disagreed with him; so did his claret, and hot suppers as often as he tried them, and that was, more or less, nearly every night in the week.

So he was, perhaps, right, in ascribing these his visions to the humours, the spleen, the liver, and the juices.

Still they sat uncomfortably upon his memory, and helped his spirits down, and made him silent and testy, and more than usually formidable to poor, little, quiet, hard-worked Mrs.
Sturk.
Dreams! What talk can be idler?
And yet haven't we seen grave people and gay listening very contentedly at times to that wild and awful sort of frivolity; and I think there is in most men's minds, sages or zanies, a secret misgiving that dreams may have an office and a meaning, and are perhaps more than a fortuitous concourse of symbols, in fact, the language which good or evil spirits whisper over the sleeping brain.
There was an ugly and ominous consistency in these dreams which might have made a less dyspeptic man a little nervous.