An account

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 house, while the kitchen, &c, are at the bottom) were adjoining the kitchen suite, all on one floor, and that the smoke and blaze seemed general. Further, I remember distinctly, though I just made a bare entry in my diary and hurried back to bed, that two of my father's maids, named Coombes and Caroline respectively, were the only persons except myself present in the vision, and that I seemed to have no impulses and no power of moving, but was merely a spectator ; nor did the idea of any risk to myself form part of the impression. Six or seven weeks afterwards (mail contract between London and Melbourne is 42 days) I received a letter from my father, dated December 2-2nd, 1881. He wrote , ' We had a fire on Sunday evening while we were at church. Coombes went with a wax-taper to tidy her room, and, I suppose, blew it out and put it down with sparks. Very soon after she left, a ring at the bell that the attic was on fire put Caroline on her mettle, while the other lost her head. She dashed it out with water before the window-frame was burnt through, and subdued it. Fifteen pounds will repair the damage — two chests of drawers much burnt, wearing apparel, &c. I gave her a sovereign for her pluck, as the roof would have been on fire in another five minutes.' Now I wish to draw your attention to what has attracted my attention most. The Sunday before December 22nd, 1881, was December 18th. I had the communication, therefore, in my sleep, not on the actual day of the fire, but on the day on which my father wrote the letter. At Kensington, where my father was writing, Australian letters have to be posted in the branch offices about 5 p.m. My dream was at 1 a.m. Time in Victoria is 9 J hours ahead of English time. When I was having the communication, therefore, it was about 3.30 p.m. in Kensington. Now with the mail going out at 5 p.m., 3.30 would have been a very natural — I think I may say a most natural time for my father to be finishing a letter to me. [Mr. Sladen, sen., confirms this.] I, therefore, had my magnetic communication when he was at once focussing his mind on me, and focussing his mind on the fire, in order to tell me about it. I have asked my wife, and she remembers perfectly my waking her up, and telling her that I had dreamt that my father's house was on fire, and was so convinced of its betokening an actual occurrence that I should make a note of it in my diary there and then.