'Once, on a train journey, I found myself with two strangers in the dining car. The one was a fine-looking old gentleman, the other a middle-aged man with an intelligent face. I gathered from their conversation that they were military men, presumably an old general and his adjutant. After a long silence the old man suddenly said to his companion, "Isn't it odd what you dream sometimes? I had a remarkable dream last night. I dreamed I was on parade with a number of young officers, and our commander-in-chief was inspecting us. Eventually he came to me, but instead of asking a technical question he demanded a definition of the beautiful. I tried in vain to find a satisfactory answer, and felt most dreadfully ashamed when he passed on to the next man, a very young major, and asked him the same question. This fellow came out with a damned good answer, just the one I would have given if only I could have found it. This gave me such a shock that I woke up." Then, suddenly and unexpectedly addressing me, a total stranger, he asked, "D'you think dreams can have a meaning?" "Well," I said, "some dreams certainly have a meaning." "But what could be the meaning of a dream like that?" he asked sharply, with a nervous twitch of the face. I said, "Did you notice anything peculiar about this young major? What did he look like?" "He looked like me, when I was a young major." "Well, then," I said, "it looks as if you had forgotten or lost something which you were still able to do when you were a young major. Evidently, the dream was calling your attention to it." He thought for a while, and then he burst out, "That's it, you've got it! When I was a young major I was interested in art. But later this interest got swamped by routine." Thereupon he relapsed into silence, and not a word more was spoken.'