An account

The occurrence made the more impression on my family, as, on account of the great attachment they knew to exist between Mr. Barnes and me, they dreaded to tell the sad news, and in fact only gently broke it at breakfast time on the Monday morning. They were much struck by my frequent references to Barnes during Sunday, after they had received the intelligence from his eldest son, who called at my house about 1 o'clock. The deceased and I had known one another for many years. Mr. Podmore called at the witness's house on September 1st, 1885, but found only his son and daughter at home. Writing on the day of his call, he says : I questioned the daughter on the Barnes incident. She could at first remember no details at all ; but after reading through the extract from England, she told me that she had a distinct recollection of going to her father's room, when roused by his cry, to ascertain whether he or her brother were ill. She did not remember his mentioning the name of Barnes at breakfast, or that the news of the death had been withheld from her father until the Monday morning. But she told me that she remembered reading, a few days afterwards, the paragraph in England describing the occurrence ; and that, had any of the details been incorrect, the fact that her father had made a mistake would certainly have dwelt in her memory. The son had been absent from home at the time. It is worthy of note that such sudden startings from sleep, with the strong impression of a definite event, but without the memory of any dream leading up to the impression, seem by no means common occurrences, outside the cases which have coincided with some weighty reality. For every fresh point (beyond the fact of coinciding with reality) that distinguishes the dreams that we are considering from ordinary dreams, goes, of course, to strengthen the argument against chance as the source of the coincidences, and to establish these cases as a distinct natural class.