I. We had better not tell mother ; it might mal

her nervous."
Miss Ogilvie went up after breakfast to see th^ elder lady, who said, " Do turn out Fanti; I dreame« last night that he went mad and bit ".
In the afternoon the two younger sisters cai home.
"How did you enjoy yourselves?" one of others asked.
" We didn't sleep well. I was dreaming that Fanti went mad when Mary wakened me, and said she had dreamed Fanti went mad, and turned into a cat, and we threw him into the fire."
Thus, as several people may see the same ghost at once, several people may dream the same dream at once. As a matter of fact, Fanti lived, sane and harmless, " all the length of all his years "}
^ Story received from Miss ; confirmed on inquiry by Drum- quaigh.
DREAMS. 5
Now, this anecdote is credible, certainly is credible by people who know the dreaming family. It is nothing more than a curiosity of coincidences ; and, as Fanti remained a sober, peaceful hound, in face of five dreamers, the absence of fulfilment increases the readiness of belief. But compare the case of the Swithinbanks. Mr. Swithinbank, on 20th May, 1883, signed for publication a statement to this effect : —
During the Peninsular war his father and his two brothers were quartered at Dover. Their family were at Bradford. The brothers slept in various quarters of Dover camp. One morning they met after parade. '* 0 William, I have had a queer dream," said Mr. Swithinbank's father. " So have I," replied the brother, when, to the astonishment of both, the other brother, John, said, ** I have had a queer dream as well. I dreamt that mother was dead." " So did I," said each of the other brothers. And the mother had died on the night of this dream- ing. Mrs. Hudson, daughter of one of the brothers, heard the story from all three.^
The distribution of the fulfilled is less than that of the unfulfilled dream by three to five. It has the extra coincidence of the death. But as it is very common to dream of deaths, some such dreams must occasionall}^ hit the target.
Other examples might be given of shared dreams i^ they are only mentioned here to prove that all the waking experiences of things ghostly, such as visions
^ Phantasms of the Living, ii., 382.
2 To " send " a dream the old Egyptians wrote it out and made a cat swallow it !
6 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
of the absent and of the dead, and of the non-existent; are familiar, and may even be common simultaneously to several persons, in sleep. That men may sleej without being aware of it, even while walking abroad that we may drift, while we think ourselves awake, into a semi-somnolent state for a period of time per-*! haps almost imperceptible is certain enough. Now J the peculiarity of sleep is to expand or contract time, as we may choose to put the case. Alfred Maury,] the well-known writer on Greek religion, dreamed long, vivid dream of the Reign of Terror, of his owi trial before a Revolutionary Tribunal, and of his ex^ ecution, in the moment of time during which he was awakened by the accidental fall of a rod in the canop] of his bed, which touched him on the neck. Thu? even a prolonged interview with a ghost may con- ceivably be, in real time, a less than momentary' dream occupying an imperceptible tenth of a seconi of somnolence, the sleeper not realising that he ha? been asleep.
Mark Twain, who is seriously interested in these subjects, has published an experience illustrative oi such possibilities. He tells his tale at considerable^ length, but it amounts to this : —
MARK TWAIN'S STORY.
Mark was smoking his cigar outside the door of his house when he saw a man, a stranger, approach- ing him. Suddenly he ceased to be visible ! Mark, who had long desired to see a ghost, rushed into his house to record the phenomenon. There, seated on
LORD BROUGHAM.
'a chair in the hall, was the very man, who had come on some business. As Mark's negro footman acts, when the bell is rung, on the principle, *' Perhaps Ithey won't persevere," his master is wholly unable to [account for the disappearance of the visitor, whom [•he never saw passing him or waiting at his door — [except on the theory of an unconscious nap. Now, a disappearance is quite as mystical as an appear- ance, and much less common.
This theory, that apparitions come in an infinites- imal moment of sleep, while a man is conscious of his surroundings and believes himself to be awake was the current explanation of ghosts in the eighteenth century. Any educated man who "saw a ghost" or "had a hallucination" called it a "dream," as Lord Brougham and Lord Lyttelton did. But, if the death of the person seen coincided with his appearance to them, they illogically argued that, out of the innumerable multitude of dreams, some must coincide, accidentally, with facts. They strove to forget that though dreams in sleep are universal and countless, " dreams " in waking hours are extremely rare — unique, for instance, in Lord Brougham's own experience. Therefore, the odds against chance coincidence are very great.
Dreams only form subjects of good dream-stories when the vision coincides with and adequately repre- sents an unknown event in the past, the present, or the future. We dream, however vividly, of the murder of Rizzio. Nobody is surprised at that, the incident being familiar to most people, in history and art. But, if we dreamed of being present at an unchronicled scene
g DR£AMS AND GHOSTS.
in Queen Mary's life, and if, after the dream was re- corded, a document proving its accuracy should be for the first time recovered, then there is matter for a good dream-story.^ Again, we dream of an event not to be naturally guessed or known by us, and our dream (which should be recorded before tidings of the fact arrive) tallies with the news of the event when it comes. Or, finally, we dream of an event (recording the dream), and that event occurs in the future. In all these cases the actual occurrence of the unknown event is the only addition to the dream's usual power of crumpling up time and space.
As a rule such dreams are only mentioned after the event, and so are not worth noticing. Very often the dream is forgotten by the dreamer till he, hears of or sees the event. He is then either re- minded of his dream by association of ideas or hi has never dreamed at all, and his belief that he has dreamed is only a form of false memory, of the common sensation of " having been here before," which he attributes to an awakened memory of real dream. Still more often the dream is uncon- sciously cooked by the narrator into harmony witl facts.
As a rule fulfilled dreams deal with the most trivial affairs, and such as, being usual, may readily occur by chance coincidence. Indeed it is impossible to set limits to such coincidence, for it would indeed be extraordinary if extraordinary coincidences never occurred.
To take examples : —
^ See " Queen Mary's Jewels " in chapter ii.
THE BISHOPS'S PIG.
THE PIG IN THE DINING-ROOM.
Mrs. Atlay, wife of a late Bishop of Hereford, reamed one night that there was a pig in the ining-room of the palace. She came downstairs, id in the hall told her governess and children of the dream, before family prayers. When these were over, nobody who was told the story having left the hall in the interval, she went into the dining-room and there was the pig. It was proved to have escaped from the sty after Mrs. Atlay got up. Here the dream is of the common grotesque type ; millions of such things are dreamed. The event, the pig in the palace, is unusual, and the coincidence of pig and dream is still more so. But unusual events must occur, and each has millions of dreams as targets to aim at, so to speak. It would be surprising if no such target were ever hit.
Here is another case — curious because the dream was forgotten till the corresponding event occurred, but there was a slight discrepancy between event and dream.
THE MIGNONETTE.
Mrs. Herbert returned with her husband from London to their country home on the Border. They arrived rather late in the day, prepared to visit the garden, and decided to put off the visit till the morrow. At night Mrs. Herbert dreamed that they went into the garden, down a long walk to a mignonette bed near the vinery. The mignonette
10 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
was black with innumerable bees, and Wilburd, the gardener, came up and advised Mr. and Mrs. Herbert not to go nearer. Next morning the pair went to the garden. The air round the mignonette was dark with wasps. Mrs. Herbert now first remembered and told her dream, adding, " but in the dream they were hees ". Wilburd now came up and advised them not to go nearer, as a wasps' nest had been injured and the wasps were on the warpath.
Here accidental coincidence is probable enough.^ There is another class of dreams very useful, and apparently not so very uncommon, that are veracious and communicate correct information, which the dreamer did not know that he knew and was vei anxious to know. These are rare enough to b^ rather difficult to believe. Thus : —
THE LOST CHEQUE.
Mr. A., a barrister, sat up one night to wril letters, and about half-past twelve went out to pi them in the post. On undressing he missed a cheque^ for a large sum, which he had received during the da}^ He hunted everywhere in vain, went to bed, slept, and dreamed that he saw the cheque curled round an area railing not far from his own door. He woke, got up, dressed, walked down the street and found his cheque in the place he had dreamed of. In his opinion he had noticed it fall from his pocket as he walked to the letter-box, without con-
1 Narrated by Mrs. Herbert.
LOST.
piously remarking it, and his deeper memory awoke slumber.^
THE DUCKS' EGGS.
A little girl of the author's family kept ducks and was anxious to sell the eggs to her mother. But the eggs could not be found by eager search. On going to bed she said, " Perhaps I shall dream of them". Next morning she exclaimed, " I did dream of them, they are in a place between grey rock, broom, and mallow; that must be * The Poney's Field' ! " And there the eggs were found.^
THE LOST KEY.
Lady X., after walking in a wood near her house in Ireland, found that she had lost an important key. She dreamed that it was lying at the root of a certain tree, where she found it next day, and her theory is the same as that of Mr. A., the owner of the lost cheque.^
1 Story confirmed by Mr. A.
2 This child had a more curious experience. Her nurse was very ill, and of course did not sleep in the nursery. One morning the little girl said, " Macpherson is better, I saw her come in last night with a candle in her hand. She just stooped over me and then went to Tom " (a younger brother) " and kissed him in his sleep." Macpherson had died in the night, and her attendants, of course, protested ignorance of her having left her deathbed.
^ Story received from Lady X. See another good case in Pro- ceedings of the Psychical Society, vol. xi., 1895, p. 397. In this case, however, the finder was not nearer than forty rods to the person who lost a watch in long grass. He assisted in the search, however, and may have seen the watch unconsciously, in a moment of absence of mind. Many other cases in Proceedings of S.P.R.
12 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
As a rule dreams throw everything into a dramatic form. Some one knocks at our door, and the dream bases a little drama on the noise; it constructs an explanatory myth, a myth to account for the noise, which is acted out in the theatre of the brain.
To take an instance, a disappointing one : —
THE LOST SECURITIES.
A lady dreamed that she was sitting at a window, watching the end of an autumn sunset. There came a knock at the front door and a gentleman and lady were ushered in. The gentleman wore an old- fashioned snuff-coloured suit, of the beginning the century; he was, in fact, an aged uncle, wh( during the Napoleonic wars, had been one of tl English detenus in France. The lady was vei beautiful and wore something like a black Spanisl mantilla. The pair carried with them a curiousl] wrought steel box. Before conversation was begui the maid (still in the dream) brought in the lady* chocolate and the figures vanished. When the maid withdrew, the figures reappeared standing by the table. The box was now open, and the old gentleman drew forth some yellow papers, written on in faded ink. These, he said, were lists of securities, which had been in his possession, when he went abroad in i8 — , and in France became engaged to his beautiful companion.
" The securities," he said, " are now in the strong
box of Messrs. ; " another rap at the door, and
the actual maid entered with real hot water. It was
SCOTT'S TALE. I3
le to get up. The whole dream had its origin in le first rap, heard by the dreamer and dramatised ito the arrival of visitors. Probably it did not last )r more than two or three seconds of real time. The laid's second knock just prevented the revelation of
le name of " Messrs. ," who, like the lady in the
mantilla, were probably non-existent people.^
Thus dream dramatises on the impulse of some faint, hardly perceived real sensation. And thus either mere empty fancies (as in the case of the lost securities) or actual knowledge which we may have once possessed but have totally forgotten, or conclu- sions which have passed through our brains as un- heeded guesses, may in a dream be, as it were, " revealed " through the lips of a character in the brain's theatre — that character may, in fact, be alive, or dead, or merely fantastical. A very good case is given with this explanation (lost knowledge revived in a dramatic dream about a dead man) by Sir Walter Scott in a note to The Antiquary. Familiar as the story is it may be offered here, for a reason which will presently be obvious.
THE ARREARS OF TEIND.
" Mr. Rutherford, of Bowland, a gentleman of landed property in the Vale ol Gala, was prose- cuted for a very considerable sum, the accumulated arrears of teind (or tithe) for which he was said to be indebted to a noble family, the titulars (lay im- propriators of the tithes). Mr. Rutherford was * Story received in a letter from the dreamer.
14 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
strongly impressed with the belief that his father had, by a form of process peculiar to the law of Scotland, purchased these teinds from the titular, and, therefore, that the present prosecution was groundless. But, after an industrious search among his father's papers, an investigation among the pub- lic records and a careful inquiry among all persons who had transacted law business for his father, no evidence could be recovered to support his defence. The period was now near at hand, when he conceived the loss of his law-suit to be inevitable ; and he had formed the determination to ride to Edinburgh next day and make the best bargain he could in the way of compromise. He went to bed with this resolution, and, with all the circumstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream to the following purpose. His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to him, he thought, and asked him why he was dis- turbed in his mind. In dreams men were not sur- prised at such apparitions. Mr. Rutherford thought that he informed his father of the cause of his dis- tress, adding that the payment of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him because he had a strong consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to recover any evidence in support of his belief. 'You are right, my son,' replied the paternal shade. ' I did ac- quire right to these teinds for payment of which you are now prosecuted. The papers relating to
the transaction are in the hands of Mr. , a
writer (or attorney), who is now retired from pro- fessional business and resides at Inveresk, near
MR. RUTHERFORD. 1 5
linburgh. He was a person whom I employed that occasion for a particular reason, but who
sver on any other occasion transacted business my account. It is very possible,' pursued the
jion, ' that Mr. may have forgotten a matter
lich is now of a very old date ; but you may call it to his recollection by this token, that when I came to pay his account there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of gold and we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern.'
" Mr. Rutherford awoke in the morning with all the words of the vision imprinted on his mind, and thought it worth while to walk across the country to Inveresk instead of going straight to Edinburgh. When he came there he waited on the gentleman mentioned in the dream — a very old man. Without saying anything of the vision he inquired whether he ever remembered having conducted such a matter for his deceased father. The old gentleman could not at first bring the circumstance to his recollection, but on mention of the Portugal piece of gold the whole returned upon his memory. He made an immediate search for the papers and recovered them, so that Mr. Rutherford carried to Edinburgh the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of losing."
The story is reproduced because it is clearly one of the tales which come round in cycles, either be- cause events repeat themselves or because people will unconsciously localise old legends in new places and assign old occurrences or fables to new
I6 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
persons. Thus every one has heard how Lord West- bury called a certain man in the Herald's office " a foolish old fellow who did not even know his own foolish old business ". Lord Westbury may very well have said this, but long before his time the remark was attributed to the famous Lord Chester- field. Lord Westbury may have quoted it from Chesterfield or hit on it by accident, or the old story may have been assigned to him. In the same way Mr. Rutherford may have had his dream or the following tale of St. Augustine's (also cited by Scott) may have been attributed to him, with the picturesque addition about the piece of Portuguese gold. Except for the piece of Portuguese gold Augustine practically tells the anecdote in his Cura pro Mortuis Hahenda, adding the acute reflectic which follows.^
*' Of a surety, when we were at Milan, we hearc tell of a certain person of whom was demanded payment of a debt, with production of his deceased father's acknowledgment, which debt, unknown to the son, the father had paid, whereupon the man began to be very sorrowful, and to marvel that his father while dying did not tell him what he owed when he also made his will. Then in this exceeding anxiousness of his, his said father appeared to him in a dream, and made known to him where was the counter acknowledgment by which that acknow- ledgment was cancelled. Which when the young man had found and showed, he not only rebutted
' Augustine. In Library of the Fathers, XVII. Short Treatises^ PP- 530-531-
ST. AUGUSTINE. 1/
the wrongful claim of a false debt, but also got back his father's note of hand, which the father had not got back when the money was paid.
" Here then the soul of a man is supposed to have had care for his son, and to have come to him in his sleep, that, teaching him what he did not know, he might relieve him of a great trouble. But about the very same time as we heard this, it chanced at Carthage that the rhetorician Eulogius, who had been my disciple in that art, being (as he himself, after our return to Africa, told us the story) in course of lecturing to his disciples on Cicero's rhetorical books, as he looked over the portion of reading which he was to deliver on the following day, fell upon a certain passage, and not being able to understand it, was scarce able to sleep for the trouble of his mind : in which night, as he dreamed, I expounded to him that which he did not under- stand ; nay, not I, but my likeness, while I was unconscious of the thing and far away beyond sea, it might be doing, or it might be dreaming, some other thing, and not in the least caring for his cares. In what way these things come about I know not ; but in what way soever they come, why do we not believe it comes in the same way for a person in a dream to see a dead man, as it comes that he sees a living man ? both, no doubt, neither knowing nor caring who dreams of their images, or where or when.
" Like dreams, moreover, are some visions of per- sons awake, who have had their senses troubled, such as phrenetic persons, or those who are mad
2
1 8 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
in any way, for they, too, talk to themselves just as though they were speaking to people verily present, and as well with absent men as with present, whose images they perceive whether per- sons living or dead. But just as they who live are unconscious that they are seen of them and talk with them (for indeed they are not really themselves present, or themselves make speeches, but through troubled senses these persons are wrought upon by such like imaginary visions), just so they also who have departed this life, to persons thus affected appear as present while they be absent, and are themselves utterly unconscious whether any man sees them in regard of their image." ^
St. Augustine adds a similar story of a trance
THE TWO CURMAS.
I
A rustic named Curma, of Tullium, near Hippo, Augustine's town, fell into a catalepsy. On reviving he said : " Run to the house of Curma the smith and see what is going on ". Curma the smith was found to have died just when the other Curma awoke. " I knew it," said the invalid, "for I heard it said in that place whence I have returned that not I, Curma of the Curia, but Curma the smith, was wanted." But Curma of the Curia saw living as well as dead people, among others Augustine, who, in his vision, baptised him at Hippo. Curma then, in the vision, went to Paradise, where he was told to go and be baptised. He said it had
^ St. Augustine, De Cura pro Mortuis.
THE ASSYRIAN PRIEST.
been done already, and was answered, " Go and be truly baptised, for that thou didst but see in vision". So Augustine christened him, and later, hearing of the trance, asked him about it, when he repeated the tale already familiar to his neighbours. Augustine thinks it a mere dream, and apparently regards the death of Curma the smith as a casual coincidence. Un esprit fort, le Saint A ugustin !
'' If the dead could come in dreams," he says, *' my pious mother would no night fail to visit me. Far be the thought that she should, by a happier life, have been made so cruel that, when aught vexes my heart, she should not even console in a dream the son whom she loved with an only love."
Not only things once probably known, yet for- I gotten, but knowledge never consciously thought out, may be revealed in a dramatic dream, apparently through the lips of the dead or the never existent. The books of psychology are rich in examples of pro- blems worked out, or music or poetry composed in sleep. The following is a more recent and very striking example : —
THE ASSYRIAN PRIEST
Herr H. V. Hilprecht is Professor of Assyriology in the University of Pennsylvania. That university had despatched an expedition to explore the ruins of Babylon, and sketches of the objects discovered had been sent home. Among these were drawings of two small fragments of agate, inscribed with characters. One Saturday night in March, 1893, Professor Hil-
20 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
precht had wearied himself with puzzling over these two fragments, which were supposed to be broken pieces of finger-rings. He was inclined, from the nature of the characters, to date them about 1700- 1140 B.C. ; and as the first character of the third line of the first fragment seemed to read KU, he guessed that it might stand for Kurigalzu, a king of that name.
About midnight the professor went, weary and perplexed, to bed.
" Then I dreamed the following remarkable dream. A tall thin priest of the old pre-Christian Nippur, about forty years of age, and clad in a simple abba, led me to the treasure-chamber of the temple, on its south-east side. He went with me into a small low- ceiled room without windows, in which there was a large wooden chest, while scraps of agate and lapis lazuli lay scattered on the floor. Here he addressed me as follows : —
" 'The two fragments, which you have published separately upon pages 22 and 26, belong together' " (this amazing Assyrian priest spoke American !).^ " ' They are not finger-rings, and their history is as follows : —
** ' King Kurigalzu (about 1300 B.C.) once sent to the temple of Bel, among other articles of agate and lapis lazuli, an inscribed votive cylinder of agate. Then the priests suddenly received the command to make for the statue of the god Nibib a pair of ear-rings of agate. We were m great dismay, since there was no agate as raw material at hand. In order to execute the command there was nothing
1 The professor is not sure whether he spoke English or German.
NIBIB. 21
\t us to do but cut the votive cylinder in three
irts, thus making three rings, each of which con- tained a portion of the original inscription. The first two rings served as ear-rings for the statue of the god ; the two fragments which have given you so much trouble are parts of them. If you will put the two together, you will have confirmation of my words. But the third ring you have not found yet, and you never will find it.' "
The professor awoke, bounded out of bed, as Mrs. Hilprecht testifies, and was heard crying from his study, "It is so, it is so ! " Mrs. Hilprecht followed her lord, " and satisfied myself in the midnight hour as to the outcome of his most in- teresting dream".
The professor, however, says that he awoke, told his wife the dream, and verified it next day. Both statements are correct. There were two sets of drawings, one in the study (used that night) one used next day in the University Library.
The inscription ran thus, the missing fragment being restored, " by analogy from many similar in- scriptions " : —
To THE GOD NiBIB, CHILD OF THE GOD BeL,
HIS Lord
KURIGALZU,
PONTIFEX OF THE GOD BeL
HAS PRESENTED IT.
But, in the drawings, the fragments were of different colours, so that a student working on the
22 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
drawings would not guess them to be parts of oi cylinder. Professor Hilprecht, however, examinee the two actual fragments in the Imperial Museui at Constantinople. They lay in two distinct casej but, when put together, fitted. When cut asundei of old, in Babylon, the white vein of the stone showed on one fragment, the grey surface on the other.
Professor Romaine Newbold, who publishes this dream, explains that the professor had uncon« sciously reasoned out his facts, the difference of colour in the two pieces of agate disappearing ii the dream. The professor had heard from Drj Peters of the expedition, that a room had been dis- covered with fragments of a wooden box and chips of agate and lapis lazuli. The sleeping mind " com- bined its information," reasoned rightly from it, anc threw its own conclusions into a dramatic form, re-| ceiving the information from the lips of a priest o| Nippur.
Probably we do a good deal of reasoning in sleep.l Professor Hilprecht, in 1882-83, was working at a] translation of an inscription wherein came Nabu- Kudurni — wswr, rendered by Professor Delitzsch "Ne- bo protect my mortar-board". Professor Hilprecht' accepted this, but woke one morning with his mind full of the thought that the words should be ren- dered *' Nebo protect my boundary," which ** sounds a deal likelier," and is now accepted. I myself, when working out the MSS. of the exiled Stuarts, was puzzled by the scorched appearance of the paper on which Prince Charlie's and the king's letters were
D^JA VU. 23
:en written and by the peculiarities of the ink. I foke one morning \\'ith a sudden flash of common- inse. Sympathetic ink had been used, and the papers had been toasted or treated with acids. This hI had probably reasoned out in sleep, and, had I ^Hreamed, my mind might have dramatised the idea, ^fcld Mr. Edgar, the king's secretary, might have ap- ^^eared and given me the explanation. Maury pub- lishes tales in which a forgotten fact was revealed to him in a dream from the lips of a dream-character (Le Sommeil et Us Reves, pp. 142-143. The curious may also consult, on all these things, The Philosophy of Mysticism^ by Karl du Pre!, translated by Mr. Massey. The Assyrian Priest is in Proceedings^ S.P.R.y vol. xii., p. 14).
f On the same plane as the dreams which we have T)een examining is the waking sensation of the deja vu.
" I have been here before.
But when or how I cannot tell."
Most of us know this feeling, all the circumstances in which we find ourselves have already occurred, we have a prophecy of what will happen next " on the tip of our tongues " (like a half- remembered name), and then the impression vanishes. Scott complains of suffering through a whole dinner-party from this sensation, but he had ^^Titten " copy " for fifty printed pages on that day, and his brain was breaking dov^n. Of course psychology has explanations. The scene may have really occurred before, or may be the result of a malady of perception, or one hemisphere of the brain not working in absolute simultaneousness with
24 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
the other may produce a double impression, the first being followed by the second, so that we really have had two successive impressions, of which one seems much more remote in time than it really was. Or we may have dreamed something like the scene and forgotten the dream, or we may actually, in some not understood manner, have had a '' prevision" of what is now actual, as when Shelley almost fainted on coming to a place near Oxford which he had beheld in a dream.
Of course, if this '' prevision " could be verified in detail, we should come very near to dreams of the future fulfilled. Such a thing — verification of a detail — led to the conversion of William Hone, th free-thinker and Radical of the early century, wh consequently became a Christian and a pessimistic clear-sighted Tory. This tale of the deja vu, there fore, leads up to the marvellous narratives of dreams simultaneous with, or prophetic of, events not capable of being guessed or inferred, or of events lost in the historical past, but, later, recovered from documents.
Of Hone's affair there are two versions. Both may be given, as they are short. If they illustrate the deja vu, they also illustrate the fond discrepancies of all such narratives.^
THE KNOT IN THE SHUTTER.
"It is said that a dream produced a powerful effect on Hone's mind. He dreamt that he was intro-
^ From Some Account of the Conversion of the late William Hone, supplied by some friend of W. H. to compiler. Name not given.
]
MR. HONE.
duced into a room where he was an entire stranger, and saw himself seated at a table, and on going towards the window his attention was somehow or other attracted to the window-shutter, and particu- larly to a knot in the wood, which was of singular appearance ; and on waking the whole scene, and especially the knot in the shutter, left a most vivid impression on his mind. Some time afterwards, on going, I think, into the country, he was at some house shown into a chamber where he had never been before, and which instantly struck him as being the identical chamber of his dream. He turned directly to the window, where the same knot in the shutter caught his eye. This incident, to his investi- gating spirit, induced a train of reflection which overthrew his cherished theories of materialism, and resulted in conviction that there were spiritual agen- cies as susceptible of proof as any facts of physical science ; and this appears to have been one of the links in that mysterious chain of events by which, according to the inscrutable purposes of the Divine will, man is sometimes compelled to bow to an unseen and divine power, and ultimately to believe and live."
"Another of the Christian friends from whom, in his later years, William Hone received so much kindness, has also furnished recollections of him.
"... Two or three anecdotes which he related are all I can contribute towards a piece of mental history which, if preserved, would have been highly interesting. The first in point of time as to his taste of mind, was a circumstance which shook his
26 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
confidence in materialism , though it did not lead to his conversion. It was one of those mental phenomena which he saw to be inexplicable by the doctrines he then held.
" It was as follows : He was called in the course of business into a part of London quite new to him, and as he walked along the street he noticed to himself that he had never been there; but onj being shown into a room in a house where he] had to wait some time, he immediately fancied] that it was all familiar, that he had seen it before,; 'and if so,' said he to himself, 'there is a vei peculiar knot in this shutter'. He opened th( shutter and found the knot. ' Now then,' thought] he, * here is something I cannot explain on my] principles ! ' "
Indeed the occurrence is not very explicable onj any principles, as a detail not visible without searchj was sought and verified, and that by a habitual mocker at anything out of the common way. Foi example, Hone published a comic explanation, cor- rect or not, of the famous Stockwell mystery.
Supposing Hone's story to be true, it naturally] conducts us to yet more unfamiliar, and therefore] less credible dreams, in which the unknown past,j present, or future is correctly revealed.
27