"No, indeed. I solemnly assure you she
has not; and I have never seen, or had any
hint of any such thing."

John's answer was to dart from the room, and
to bring back with him a curious piece of
unfinished work. It was a canvas, in the form of
a square screen, into which John's wife had
sewed feathers of water-fowl which John had shot
by a large mere near which we were living.
The screen, which had made considerable
progress, was the joint effort of the ingenious pair;
and the feathers, being assorted with many
various colours and shades of colour, sewed
into the canvas by the quills, with their tops
partly overlapping each other, produced a
fantastic and agreeable mosaic, which, at least, had
the merit of complete originality.  As I had
never seen anything even remotely like it, the
inference was strong that John's brain, deeply
preoccupied by his screen and its approaching
presentation (he was actually cutting the feather
quills for his wife when I rang my bell), had
impressed on my brain the dominant idea.  Nothing
could more exactly resemble the pattern I had
drawn, to show John what my dream had been,
than the real pattern. The screen has since
been mounted, under glass, on a fine gilded
frame, and is at this time an ornament to my
drawing-room.  It is singular to observe how it
puzzles everybody who sees it for the first time
—just as it did me in my dream—as to what
the material is that produces its curious mosaic.

In a morning dream I saw many letters
brought to me on a salver at breakfast. One
especially, a very large packet edged with black,
made a strong impression on my dreaming eyes.
At breakfast, the same morning, the letters were
brought to me as usual, and were numerous;
but I was suddenly impelled to say to Jane,
"Where is the large packet edged with black?"
"Oh, sir," replied Jane, "I thought you would
not like to see black at breakfast; but here it
is."  Jane produced from her apron-pocket the
identical large letter I had dreamed of.  There
was nothing surprising in the letter itself.

At another time, I was staying at an hotel, in
a German town, when I dreamed one morning
that my English valet entered the room, and
told me he had received an invitation from one
of the garçons of the inn to attend his
marriage with one of the soubrettes, also of the
establishment; and that he very earnestly
requested my permission to let him go.

Out of this dream I was awakened by the
valet himself, rapping at the door and announcing
my shaving-water.

"Come in," I said. "But you have startled
me out of a fine sleep, in which I was dreaming
that you were come to ask my leave to go to a
wedding."

"Lord, sir, why so I am!" was the astonished
reply.  "But of course you had heard all about
it before?"

No one had ever breathed a word to me on
that subject so utterly unimportant to me,
though so highly interesting to the other man.

My experience of impressions in dreams
conveyed to me from friends, or relatives, who were
thinking about me, at a distance, has been not
unfrequent.  I have also known other cases like
the following:

Mr. D., formerly Protestant minister to a
French congregation at Berne (from himself I
had the story), had been attending a sick
parishioner, whom, however, other parochial
duties had prevented him from visiting for some
days.  A dream then impressed him, in the most
vivid manner, that he saw the poor sick man
lying all alone, in a most wretched state, and
that he heard him cry out, "Make haste, Mr.
D.; there is no time to be lost! Come to me
instantly, or I shall perish of starvation!" The
dream had such an effect on the minister that he
got up, though it was only two o'clock in the
morning, and, dressing himself hastily, went to
the house of the poor man.  All was as he had
dreamed. The people who should have attended
to the patient had deserted him, and left him
completely alone, during two or three days, in a
solitary house.  His rheumatic fever rendered
it impossible for him to stir.  Indeed, there was
neither meat nor drink in the house; and if
Mr. D. had not come to him at the critical
moment, starvation must have ensued.  It is
to be remarked that the man declared he
expected Mr. D. at the time he came to him,
"For," said he, "sir, I did think of you, and
pray to Heaven you might be sent to me."

The following occurred to myself:

There was a lady, married to a cousin of mine,
whom I will call Mrs. Charles.  We were once
brisk correspondents, but our correspondence
had fallen into the sere and yellow leaf.  An
occasional letter from her in the course of the
year I was accustomed to receive. That
occasional letter had not long since reached me,
and I had not the slightest reason to expect
another for some time to come.  In this lady's
last letter, she was well, all at home were well.
There was no cause for anxiety.  Suddenly—à
propos of nothing—I dream that I see this lady
lying on the floor, insensible, pale, dying; her
husband is bending over her, her daughters
stand about in attitudes of consternation.  I see
her lifted upon a sofa.  I wake in a state
of great distress. The next day—impossible to
get rid of the impression made by this dream—
so strong was it, so strangely convinced was I
that something disagreeable had happened at my
cousin's house, I could not refrain from writing
to the husband (though he never had been
my correspondent) to confess my weakness
at having been disturbed by a dream about his
wife—which dream I detailed to him—to beg of
him to say nothing to her about my superstitious
bodings, but to entreat him to write to me without
delay, saying (as I hoped he would say) that
all went well at home. There was an ominous
pause of a few days. Then, I received a letter
from my cousin, which began: "Your dream
was indeed very striking and extraordinary,"
and which went on to relate that, on the very
evening previous to the night on which I had
the drearn, Mrs. Charles, for the first time in