An account

November 29th, 1882. I have nothing to add to the narrative of my dream. I did not, as I should now do, make a minute of such a dream. At the time, I thought, as of other dreams, it is only a dream. Only on receipt of my son's letter, dated from Port Natal, South Africa, did the coincidence and singularity of the phenomena bring to my mind the dream, and how it exactly corresponded with the actual state of affairs on board the ship at the time it occurred. I may mention my wife and daughter have reviewed the time and circumstance, and their memory is clear as to my relating the dream in the morning. The scene is as fresh on mind and memory as if it had occurred yesterday. In an interview with Mr. Podmore on October 8th, 1883, Mr. Ashby mentioned that he dreams very little. At this interview his wife and daughter both stated that they recollected hearing of the dream what he meant, when he said he had distinctly heard his father come upstairs and kick with his heavy boots against the door, as he was in the habit of doing when he returned from sea. The boy's statement and her own dream so alarmed the woman that early next morning she told Mrs. Strong and other neighbours of her fears. News afterwards came that her husband's vessel had been run into by a steamer, and that he and the boy were drowned. This might seem at first sight, a favourable specimen, owing to the alleged double percipienee. But it is impossible to rely on a report from uneducated witnesses, of a confused scene in the middle of the night. If the boy heard the sound which his father was in the habit of making, why should he have taken fright? We cannot be sure that he did not imagine he had heard the sound after he had been infected with his mother's alarm ; for if this were so, the story might still easily have become just what it viii.] REGARDED AS TELEPATHIC. 337 immediately after its occurrence and before its verification, but they could add nothing to the above narrative. § 5. This case forms a natural transition to the group where the reality is not only presented in a pictorial way, but the dream-scene corresponds (in whole or in part) with what the eyes of the supposed agent are actually beholding. The majority, perhaps, of the alleged dream-cases are of this pictorial sort ; but most of them have to be set aside, on the ground either of inaccuracy of detail, or of the connection of the dream with matters that have been recently occupying the waking mind. Thus a widow whose husband was killed by an accident at sea gives us a cir