her life, had a kind of fit, resulting from a flow
of blood to the head.  She was stooping down
to take up something that was lying on the floor,
when she fell, and was lifted insensible, and
laid on a sofa just as I had seen.  She was bled
and cupped, and for some days her life was in
extreme danger.  At the time Mr. Charles
wrote she was out of danger, but it was judged
best not to speak to her of my dream.
Whether she ever knew of it to the day of her
death (she died some years afterwards), I am
unaware.  Whose brain it was that impressed me
with a knowledge of Mrs. Charles's illness I
cannot say; it is natural to suppose that both
the husband and daughters would think of
me in the course of the painful event.  Or it
might be that the patient herself sent me an
unconscious brain message. Between us there
had always been a strong attachment.  I, the boy,
used to call her, the matron, my second mother.

I pass on to note a few cases of impression
on the brain in sleep, having been made by
the brain of a dying person at the
moment of dissolution—a phenomenon which I
have already noted as occurring during the
waking state of both parties, and which is so
fertile a source of belief in apparitions: so dread
a mother of all the superstitious horrors that
afflict humanity.

The two following cases happened to myself:

1.  I was, many years ago, sleeping at an old-
fashioned inn at a small town on the Rhine.  In
the middle of the dark night I was half awakened
by what seemed to me a small chime of bells,
just such as a musical clock of the old foreign
make might be supposed to jangle forth to mark
the hour.  Coincidently with this sound, the
thought of a friend whom I had sent off to
Madeira, hopefully, for the benefit of a milder
climate, rushed into my mind, and I said to
myself, "I feel very anxious about Richmond.
I can't help thinking he is worse."  The
following morning I looked all over my apartment
to find the clock that had chimed.
There was no clock in the room. Then I rang
up the garçon, and questioned him as to the
existence of a chiming clock in any contiguous
apartment.  Not only was there no chiming
clock in the house, but (as far as the waiter was
aware) not even in the town.  I was so struck
by the oddity of my impression that I had
heard a chime of little bells, and by my
connecting the circumstance with the illness of my
friend in Madeira, that I marked down in my
pocket-book the date of the occurrence, and of
my uncomfortable feeling about Richmond. The
exact hour when I seemed to hear the small
ghostly chime was, of course, not precisely
known to me, but by the complete darkness of
the room, the season being early September, I
guessed that the thing had taken place before
four o'clock.

A fortnight or three weeks later, I received a
letter from a brother of Richmond, announcing
to me my friend's death at Madeira on the
night which I had noted down in my pocket-
book; hour not mentioned. Perhaps a year
after this, I handed down to dinner, and sat
next to, the widow of Richmond, who was
on a visit (in London) to this brother of her late
husband.  I conversed with her about her
husband's illness and death.  He had been better
on first arriving at Funchal, and his death had
come on suddenly.  After I had mentioned my
fancy of the chimes, and the singular impression
connected with that fancy, Mrs. Richmond
said, "This is most remarkable! On the night
he died, he was worried, as he had been several
times before, by the chimes of a town clock,
which jingled out a wretched tune, every hour,
from a belfry not far from our house.  I myself,
on his account, was worried by those chimes
too; and I shall always connect a painful idea
with chimes of every kind, for the bells were
actually ringing at the very moment when my
dear husband breathed his last in my arms!"

2.  I was living in a house near Croydon, in
Surrey, about twelve miles from London.  My
father's residence was five or six miles on the
other or Middlesex side of the metropolis.  I had
no reason whatever to believe my father was ill.
Indeed, I had not long returned to my own
home from a visit to him at his; and I had left
him in excellent health, walking actively about,
and riding many miles a day as usual.

One night, I dreamed an awful dream, which had
all the vividness of reality.  I thought I was in
a church, near the altar.  The church was dim
and vault-like.  Suddenly, a light gleamed from
a distant part of the building, and a procession
appeared issuing from a low portal, and
advancing up the centre aisle—a procession of
shrouded persons, each holding a tall lighted
taper.  The procession advanced up to me, and
passed me.  Each figure looked straight
forward and took no notice of my presence.  A
creeping chill came over me as I perceived
that all the persons in the procession were known
to me, and were known also to be dead.  On
this occasion I had none of the puzzling feeling
which one generally has, in dreams, on seeing
those whom, in our waking hours, we know to
be no longer of this world.  I did not, as we
often do in such cases, look upon any person in
the procession either as alive, or as doubtfully
dead, nor did I feel flashes of conflicting consciousness.
No!  I knew that I looked upon a procession
of the dead, and, moreover, that each person
appeared to me in order as to time of death.  It
seemed to me that the long line was composed
of all the dead persons whom I had known as
living, from a child.  There was the little girl
whom I used to play with, and who was the first
human being I ever saw dead—whose cold waxen
corpse gave me an idea that there was such a
thing as death at all. There was my old nurse;
there was a certain gardener of whom I had
been fond; there was a black servant of my
father's whose ebon face I had learned to love.  As
the procession came down to later days, my
agitation increased.  I longed to call out, and
chide the cold impassiveness of the ghastly
train.  But all went on, slowly, soundlessly,
each with the taper in the hand, past me, past