An account

I have heard both my daughter and my maid speak of the occurrence and describe it. M. Mason. To pass from water to fire — the evidential force of the following case is not easy to estimate, without knowing how frequent dreams of conflagrations are ; but this particular dreamer, at any rate, can recall no similar experience, and has never in his life made a written note of a dream except on this occasion. Mr. D. B. W. Sladen, of 26, Campden Grove, Kensington, W., writes : — January 4th, 1886. (98) In December, 1881, we were living at 6, George Street, (East) Melbourne, Victoria. My father resided then, as he does now, at Phillimore Lodge, Kensington, W. In those days I always went to bed about midnight. I awoke suddenly, tremendously startled by a dream that my father's house was on fire. The dream impressed me so vividly that I felt convinced that a fire had actually happened there, and, striking a light, I walked across the room to the dressing-table, on which my diary lay (I used generally to jot down the events of the day just before turning in), and made a brief entry of it, there and then, first looking at my watch in order to be able to set down the time, which I found to be 1 a.m. I had, therefore, been in bed less than an hour, which of itself seems to add an extraordinary feature to the case (I refer to my sinking to sleep, dreaming, 1 With regard to these words, Miss Mason says : — April 12th, 1885. My old nurse has such a dislike to the subject of thought-transference, which she considers ' nonsense,' that she would never have told me of her dream if she had known that it afforded an instance. And when I told her afterwards how her dream had answered to my thoughts, she was so angry at having unconsciously supplied me with an instance, that she always refused to talk of it again, though I have often tried to make her do so. It is, therefore, not surprising that she should have forgotten some of the details of a dream nearly 7 years ago. viii.] REGARDED AS TELEPATHIC. 325 and waking up, as after a long sleep, in so short a space of time). The entry in my diary is, as it was likely to be when standing out of bed, very brief : 1 At night I dreamt that the kitchen in my father 's house was on fire. I awoke and found that it was 1 a.m.' I kept my diary in a plain paper book ; and the entry comes below what I did up to midnight on December 22nd. What I further still remember distinctly of the vision is this — that in it, the servants' bedrooms (which are really at the top of my father's ho