A CURIOUS DREAM 431 



thoughts. I told my parlor audience at New York a week or two ago that 

 your suggestion would be an admirable one in the case of a clergyman who 

 had delivered a sermon just like a printed one of a famous divine. His 

 father probably heard it and having a very retentive memory recollected it 

 and transmitted it with his virtues to his cruelly wronged offspring. 



I may possibly have thanked you before, but no matter. My table is laden 

 with what the Western people call a " boom " of pamphlets, and I sometimes 

 forget whether I have acknowledged a particular one, as I mean to do with 

 the very best of them at least. 



Very truly yours, 0. W. HOLMES. 



Mr. Shaler was observant of his dreams and would often 

 entertain the family at breakfast with some fantastic experi- 

 ence of the kind he had had the night before. His dream about 

 the white elephant that he found in his bed would make him 

 laugh until the tears ran down his cheeks. Among his notes is the 

 record of the following curious dream. He told it to Sir Arthur 

 Sullivan when he was in London, and always believed that it 

 gave the musician a hint for the plot of his opera " Ruddygore." 

 He writes : " In the fancy which I shall tell as it came to me I 

 was sitting with a friend one evening talking of the portrait of 

 an old warrior which hung on the wall. Suddenly the likeness 

 became living and the figure stood upon the floor. He told us 

 that he was prisoned by enchantment in the picture centuries 

 ago, doomed to wait until some one should pronounce certain 

 words which would break the spell. These words we had 

 spoken. He besought me to make the sign of the cross upon his 

 forehead that he might go to his rest, for which he was the more 

 eager for his centuries of waiting. This I did, when at once he 

 was gone. On the wall still hung the vacant canvas all of 

 one hue. This curious dream could be made the basis of an 

 effective tale. I do not remember ever to have read a story with 

 such an incident." 



In other than scientific fields the first book by Mr. Shaler 

 to be widely read was the history of Kentucky in the Ameri- 

 can Commonwealths Series, which was published in 1884. This 

 was in a measure a labor of love, and it was an undertak- 



