His friend Bill, sitting at the back of the hall that night, was prepared and engrafted some two or three years earlier.

Neville reads out a letter from his friend Bill, who in a vision sat on a nest, saw an egg break and a two-inch Neville come out, who then grew to immensity and led Bill and their mutual friend Jan Johnson up into the sky by the hand.

A friend of his, Bill, present in the audience, wrote him a letter describing how he dozed off watching TV at home, found himself awake inside a dream driving his car with his wife beside him, took the wheel back from her, remembered 'I am' as a pile-up approached, and woke back in his chair.

Neville tells the audience of a letter Art wrote him describing a move from nothing to a considerable weekly sum, notes Art now travels from Long Beach, and mentions a call he received from New York the previous night that he asks Bill to be told about.

He recalls having told this same story of Bill's four golden arrows from the platform some months earlier, and says a tape of it exists though he does not have it.

Benny came home the other night and told Neville and Bill again, over Martinis, how he lifted the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, saw its rosy cheeks, embraced it and called it "my son, my sweetheart, O my darling" before it vanished leaving only a portrait of itself in his hand; Neville waits for the 6th of March when David will call Benny Father.

A third letter, from his friend Bill, arrived the day of the lecture, recounting a dream in which Bill stood on a hilltop and pulled a huge fish from a pool with his right hand while an uninterested friend went down the hill and could catch nothing; Neville interprets it.

Neville received a letter from a woman describing a vision in which he summoned a group of his students, told them 'I am to die. I must die,' vanished, and word came that he had died — and the group was ecstatically happy.

Ritchie eventually married a younger man, had two children, and the family are now in Thailand with the State Department.

In New York, Neville's friend Tommy, an elderly commercial artist, was in love with a much younger woman named Ritchie who would not see him; Tommy imagined a three-thirty phone call inviting him to lunch, and at that moment Neville woke with the impulse to telephone Ritchie and then Tommy, arranging a luncheon at the Club which Tommy hosted and Neville paid for.

A friend of Neville's, Bill, present in the audience, fell asleep watching TV, dreamed he was driving his car with his wife, became lucid in the dream, proclaimed "I AM" and woke in his chair; he shared the experience with Neville.