Vanishing suddenly

Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. October 21st, 1884. While I lay with my daughter's hand in mine, as she relates in the accompanying memoir, 1 fell into the semi-slumber usual with me on lying down to rest for a few minutes after my luncheon, early in the afternoon. At these times I very seldom fall asleep, but simply into a species of slumber, in which I frequently find myself in a kind of rayless or moonless moonlight, looking, and this usually with serene pleasure, at nearby gardens, slopes, rivulets, and various little vistas, which more times than otherwise vanish at my bidding, and except I fall asleep, are immediately replaced by others. Sometimes these are peopled with 1 A parallel case, where a dream seems to have been suggested by what someone else had been silently reading, is No. 407 in the Supplement. ix.] BORDERLAND CASES. 401 apparently living figures, and frequently these also dissolve at my bidding and are replaced by others. There is, however, this difference ; any control I exercise for the purpose of a change seems to be more immediate and more absolute over a change of figures than over a change of scenes. I am quite sure that at these times I do not fall into any condition that fairly can be called pathological. Under the slumber now under consideration, my attention became fixed on a tall thin man, with head uncovered, beardless, and dressed in black. He came toward the foot of the bed on which I lay from the left ; and perhaps I should note that my daughter sat upon my left. Immediately I saw several other figures ; and though these stood outside the lines or field of my direct vision, I remember distinctly that they made on me an impression of sympathy with powerlessness. I might think that the sympathy touched me through the countenance of the man, were it not that he impressed me with also the opposite of powerlessness. His age seemed to be about 50, his face oblong, a little sallow, seriously thoughtful, and withal indicative of great but quiet firmness in action, whether from a sense of duty based on his own judgment, or duty under a sense of obedience, I cannot determine ; though, in the absence of any appearance of the vindictive, I think or at least am inclined to think that alike his presence and his action were based on simply an obedience to some rightful authority. This action was a reverent stepping forward, and a silent laying of his hands on a coffin that seemed to rest across the foot of the bed. The moment I saw the coffin I thought : I do not like this scene ; plea