398 MAUKY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS. 



feeling creeps in, suggested, as we have elsewhere re- 

 marked, by some one of the many strange coincidences 

 of events which, casual though they be, take strong 

 hold of the imagination. We might vivify our subject 

 by half-a-dozen stories of such dreams ; some of them 

 of old date, but keeping their vitality as anecdotes by 

 the seeming mystery they involve. It is needless to 

 say that these stories lose nothing of their marvellous 

 character by long repetition. The original dreamers, 

 we believe, would often be perplexed by the shapes 

 their dreams have gradually assumed, with positive 

 affirmation at each step of the story. A simple ques- 

 tion will often disturb narratives of this kind. We 

 recollect an instance where the mystery related was a 

 dream by an officer in America of the death of a 

 friend in India, whose death was stated to have 

 occurred at the very hour of the dream. A dry 

 sceptic at the table blighted the anecdote by asking 

 if due allowance had been made for the difference of 

 longitude of the two countries ? So few of these 

 harmless superstitions are left to us, that the interrup- 

 tion to the story might have been charitably spared. 



We have already said much of the marvel of 

 dreams, as a portion of life alternating with the higher 

 functions of the waking state. Contrasting the two 

 states, it could hardly be supposed that one should be 

 the best expounder of the other. Yet such is in 

 reality the case. Dreams, even in their strangest in- 

 congruities, are in no way so well interpreted as 

 through the acts of the mind awake. The law of 

 continuity is preserved here also, though often and 



