DREAMS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 276, 29 July 1880, Page 2

DREAMS.

Some years ago, it is related, a pedlar ■was murdered in the north of Scotland, an.i the crime remained for a long time a mystery. At length a man came forward, and declared that ne had a dream in which there was shown to him a house, and a voice directed him to a spot near the house, where was buried the pack of the murdered man; and, on search being made, the pack was actually found near the spot. At first it was thought that the dreamer was himself the murderer, but the man who had been himse.f accused confessed the crime, and 1 said that the dreamer knew nothing about j it. It turned out afterwards that the murderer and the dreamer had been drinking together fin* several days a short time after the murder. It has been suggested, as a possible solution, that the murderer allowed statements to escape Tiim whilst under the influence of drink which had been recalled to the other in his dream, though he had not the slightest remembrance of them in his sober hours. A gentleman dreamt that bis house was on fire ; and the dream made so vivid an impression that he immediately returned, saw it on fire indeed, and was just in iim i to save one of his children from the flames. A lady dreamt that an aged female relative had been murdered by a black servant, and this dream was repeatrd so often that she repaired to the old lady’s house, and set a gentleman to watch in the night. About three o’clock in th.e morning the bl ck servant was discovered going to his mistress’s room, as he said, with coals to mend the fire—a sufficiently absurd excuse at such an hour and in the middle o.f summer. The truth was apparent when u strong knife was found bulled beneath the coals. The coincidence of dreams are vex*y remarkable For two persons to dream the same thing, at the same time, in different places and under different circumstances, exceeds the power of chance, boundless as that pretends to be. AMr Joseph Taylor relates that a boy residing at a school a hundred miles from home dreamt that he went to his father’s house, found all closed lor the night but the back door, went into his mother’s room and found her awake. “ I come to bid you goodbye he said, “I am going on a long journey.” She answered with a great trembling, “ 0 dear son, thou art dead !” And he'awoke. Soon after ho received a letter from his father making anxious inquiries after his health, in consequence ,

of a frightful dream which his mother had on the same night, and which w;\s exactly identical with his, emi to the very words of the conversation. Fortunately no sad results followed, though it may have proved a warning to the boy in some inscrutable manner unknown to his friends. The case of the gentleman from Cornwall who dreamt eight* days before the event that he saw Mr Perceval murdered in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, and distinctly recognised from prints, after the murder, both the assassin and his victim, whom he had never seen previously, seems capable only of a supernatural explanation, especially when it is remembered that the gentleman w»s with difficulty dissuaded by his friends from going to London to warn Mr Perceval (known to him in his dream as the Chancellor of the Exchequer). He urged that it had occmred three times in the same ni ht, bat his friends thinking it a fool’s errand, he allowed the matter to drop till the news of the murder rudely resuscitated it. A lady of our acquaintance, about to change her habitation, saw in sleep an exact picture ot her future homo ; and from her dream ahnc could recognise the rooms and passages. We tried to account for this to her by saying that the dreani really influenced her conduct, and that when she met with a house answering to her dream, she was naturally predisposed to take it. A gentleman from 'Yorkshire formed one of a party for visiting the Exhibition of 1862. A few days before leaving for London he had a most vivid dream ct the Tower, the armoury, and more especially the room in which the regalia and crown jewels are kept. He heard the old woman who showed the room address the audience, and treasured up carefully her very peculiarities of voice, dress, manner, and features, and created considerable amusement among his friends by minrcking the phantom show-woman when he awoke. He went to London at the proper time, and of course visited the Tower, where he was astounded and somewhat sobered by the phantom's counterpart, which was identical in every respect. Several years ago the newspapers were filled with details of a horrible murder, of which the facts, related from memory, seem to be these : Mrs Martin, the wite of a farmer, was in terrible distress of mind because her daughter Maria was missing. It was feared she had been murdered by her sweetheart in a fit of jealousy, and hidden somewhere. For a long time no trace of the body could be found. At length the mother had a dream, in which it was revealed to her that th ■ corpse of her child was buried under the barn floor. This proved to be the case, the body was recovered, and the murderer detected. The mother of a medical student dreamt that her son had got into some serious trouble in Lon lon, and could not rest till she leffc"' her home in the Midland counties and gought him out. To her sorrow, the dream was painfully verified, and the consequences might have b.en serious if she bad not arrived in time. A barrister of great penetration relates the story of a lady who dreamt that a railway guard was killed in a collision. She described the man and the circumstances so faithfully that there was no difficulty in identifying the guard (who was actually killed the same night in a lamentable accident) as the man she saw in her dream. The lady rarely left her home, and the gnard was quite unknown to her. Archdeacon Squire, in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1748, tells the story of a } certain Henry Axford, of Devizes, who < caught a severe cold when he was twentyeight years of age, which rendered him speechless, and he was dumb for four years. In July 1741, in bis sleep he dreamt that he fell jmto a furnace of boiling wort, which put him into so great an agony of fright that he actually did call out aloud, and recovered the use of his tongue from that moment as ever.” Hora:e Bushnell, D. D., in his “ Nature and the Supernatural ” recounts a case which he th’nks cannot be explained by natural causes. Sitting by the fire one stormy November night, in a hotel parlour in the Napa Valley of California, there entered a venerable-looking person named Captain Yount, who had come to California as a trapper more than forty years before There he lived, and acquired a large estate, and was highly respected. ahe Captain said that or seven years previous he had a dream in which he saw what appeared to himto be a company of emigrants arrested by snows of the mountains, and perishing rapidly of cold and hunger. The whole scene appeared vividly before him ; henoted a hughe cliff and the very features of the persons, and their very' looks of agonising despair. He awuke, but shoitly after fell asleep again, and dreamt precisely the same thing. Being now impressed with the truth of the story, he told it to an old hunter shortly afterwards, who declared that he knew.a spot which exactlv answered to his description This decided him, and, taking a company of men, with mules, blan 'ets &c., theyhurried to Carson Valley Pass, one hundred and fifty miles distant, wherethey found the emigrants in exactly the condition of the dream, and brought in, the remnant alive.” —Temple Bar * '