An account

I have never at any time made a secret of my constant communion with my loved son. All my family have heard my dreams, as they took place — often at the very time — and then have seen the corroboration of them when my letters arrived from Queensland. I have no letters in my possession, though they are only lately destroyed. Could I have foreseen the future, as it is now, I should most certainly have preserved a record of all events, with the dates. The dreams are purely matters of recollection. I fancy that I never wrote them, as I was very often suffering at the time. But they were always related to one or more of the family at the time they occurred. In my last to Ada [her daughter], I asked her as to my dreams, and she sends a few lines, which I copy from her letter : — ' With regard to your dreams I am not very clear, but I remember, when we were at Shanklin, you dreamt that something happened to Alfred, and there was water, and something dark kept close to him. That is all I remember of the dream. You told Mary and me about it, and you wrote it down, and said we should hear something more about it. In my heart I thought it stuff. However, by the next mail came a letter, saying that on such a day, giving the date and hour, Alfred was on horseback (I think), and something happened to the horse, and he would have been drowned but for some black men, who rescued and took care of him. It is years since I thought of it, but once set off, I daresay more would come to me.' Accept this at what it is worth. You see she has combined two of my dreams. The following is an extract from the only letter of the son's bearing on these experiences that can be found ; it refers to the third case. I arranged for the funeral this afternoon. My poor horse suffered, as you may suppose, hard riding. Twenty-third. Three times rode to Roma — 18 miles and more before 1 p.m. ; then we started to the burial ground I put Willy into his coffin, and into his grave. As a baby I nursed him to sleep, and into his cradle ; now I went down into his grave, and drew the ropes from under, so that he was not shaken. A sad day's work. This may conclude, for the present, the subject of dreams. If with respect to some of the cases cited I have used expressions implying that we may regard them as pretty certainly telepathic, this is on the understanding, as I have explained, that telepathy is established independently of them. But though this branch of evidence can scarcely be in itself conclusive, the study of it will materially assi