—I don't care what ________ about me. （   ）

We all have four to six dreams per night. But why do some people seem to r emember their dreams while others don’t?

People who report that they have good dream recollection are more likely, than others who don’t, to have been woken up during a stage of sleep referred to as REM  (rapid eye movement). This is the stage of sleep where dreams occur, and if you’re woken up during it you may recall the dream you were having more readily.

Light sleepers who are woken up very easily by the slightest sound tend  to report having many more dreams they can remember than heavy sleepers who can nod off during thunder and lightening and do not know they’ve been dreaming at all. Therefore one way to remember your dreams is to set an alarm to go off frequently during the night, as you’ll have more chances of waking during REM sleep. However，doing this exercise regularly will be bad for your sleeping   pattern, and may mess with your body clock.

Interestingly, some people have the ability to dream to order, to a degree. If they focus on thinking about  remembering their dreams, get a dream journal ready to write   in and place it by their bed at night and tell themselves they  will write down their dreams upon waking, they’re more likely  to actually produce a memorable dream.

Studies have shown us that during dreams we often play  out different scenarios (情节) and our brains work out how to   deal with them, should they actually occur in waking life.  Thus, if you dreamed you lost your car keys and needed to find   another way of getting to your destination, this could just be  your mind working out what you would do in the future if this  happened to you. The reason why people don’t always remember dreams is that it would interfere (干扰) with waking life. An overload of information which may not be necessary could confuse your daily thinking, and lead you to perform less well. However, storing information away in your mental filing system located in your subconscious (潜意识), in case you ever need it, is far more efficient.

     Peter Byford was born in a stone house in Honley，and when he was tiny his dad，a former miner，got a job in the textile trade and the Byford's moved to Skelmanthorpe.Life was tough but fun，and young Peter spent his days in the rolling countryside，rafting on the river，making tree camps or playing on his own with his model railway and soldiers.

     His world was rocked by tragedy when his mother died，which destroyed young Peter，a shy child who suddenly had to grow up fast.Though grieving，he went up the road to live with his aunt and uncle，and returned home much too young to face the next challenge，that of looking after his dad，who had lost an arm in an accident in a factory.

     By then he had taken the nickname as Biff.The younger Biff struggled at school because of his shyness，but loved the music lessons and became friends with a classmate whose brother had a guitar.At the same time a young man who had a banjo(班卓琴)moved into the house opposite where he lived and he taught young Biff how to play it.The seeds had been sown and music began to influence his life.

     But even so，his working career began，in typical fashion for 1960s West Yorkshire.After a short time as an apprentice(学徒)carpenter，he went to work in the local weaving factory.And this was where Biff Byford，soon to become a legend in the world of rock，first learned to sing.The machines would run all day，clickety­clack，clickety­clack.The noise was incredible，and the workers would spend their time trying to lip read each other.

     It was just so noisy in there.It was really heavy metal.The only thing to do was sing to yourself.So sing to himself he did，the melodies(旋律)locking in place in his head，not to be forgotten.His dream first exploded into a rocking reality.

     Mark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel.And he surely deserves additional praise：the man who popularized the clever literary attack on racism.

     I say clever because anti­slavery fiction had been the important part of the literature in the years before the Civil War.H.B.Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is only the most famous example.These early stories dealt directly with slavery.With minor exceptions，Twain planted his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely.He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story.

     Again and again，in the postwar years，Twain seemed forced to deal with the challenge of race.Consider the most controversial，at least today，of Twain's novels，Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.Only a few books have been kicked off the shelves as often as Huckleberry Finn，Twain's most widely read tale.Once upon a time，people hated the book because it struck them as rude.Twain himself wrote that those who banned the book considered the novel “trash and suitable only for the slums(贫民窟)．”More recently the book has been attacked because of the character Jim，the escaped slave，and many occurences of the word nigger.(The term Nigger Jim，for which the novel is often severely criticized，never appears in it.)

     But the attacks were and are silly—and miss the point.The novel is strongly anti­slavery.Jim's search through the slave states for the family from whom he has been forcibly parted is heroic.As J．Chadwick has pointed out，the character of Jim was a first in American fiction—a recognition that the slave had two personalities，“the voice of survival within a white slave culture and the voice of the individual：Jim，the father and the man.”

There is much more.Twain's mystery novel Pudd'nhead Wilson stood as a challenge to the racial beliefs of even many of the liberals of his day.Written at a time when the accepted wisdom held Negroes to be inferior(低等的)to whites，especially in intelligence，Twain's tale centered in part around two babies switched at birth.A slave gave birth to her master's baby and，for fear that the child should be sold South，switched him for the master's baby by his wife.The slave's lightskinned child was taken to be white and grew up with both the attitudes and the education of the slave­holding class.The master's wife's baby was taken for black and grew up with the attitudes and intonations of the slave.

     The point was difficult to miss：nurture(养育)，not nature，was the key to social status.The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice—manner of speech，for example—were，to Twain，indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.

Twain's racial tone was not perfect.One is left uneasy，for example，by the lengthy passage in his autobiography(自传)about how much he loved what were called“nigger shows”in his youth—mostly with white men performing in black­face—and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them.Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality.His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not.

     Was Twain a racist？Asking the question in the 21st century is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln.If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the“wisdom”of the considered moral judgments of the present，we will find nothing but error.Lincoln，who believed the black man the inferior of the white，fought and won a war to free him.And Twain，raised in a slave state，briefly a soldier，and inventor of Jim，may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century.