DREAMS AND OMENS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5965, 18 October 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

DREAMS AND OMENS.

Have you a pet superstition! Do you refuse to sit down at a table with thirteen ? Do you dislike to see the now moon over your left shoulder ? Does the howl of a dog under your window at midnight affect you disagreeably? Do you decline to cross the street between the carriages of a passing funeral ? If you subscribe to a belief in any one of the signs or omens included in the list you are endowed with the occult science of superstition. If you believe in them all you are a pjycologist or mystic, and an investigator into the phenomena of signs, warnings, dreams, visions, and presentiments. And you will be interested in the experience of others. In a world wli&re the simplest and most natural fact apparent to the actual senses is a miracle—as, for instance, the mystery of the egg and the chicken. We may at any moment develop a new power, an unknown forco of whose existence we have dreamed, or had remote waking hints, but which bursts upon us at its moment of realisation, as a bewilderment of beauty or utility. It has been truly and forcibly said that life is a wonderful chrysalis from which at any moment may issue the unexpected on ideal wings. It is to the acute senses that the sights and sounds of the supernatural world are revealed. Ask the average man if he has ever seen a and he will unhesitatingly answer 'No.' But word your question in a different way. Enquire as to his familiarity with the supernatural, and he will. relnte a dozen instances of unaccountable sights and sounds, remarkable dreams which have made a life-long impression on him, and warnings which if he had been superstitious he would have heeded ; but he isn't and! only believes what ho sees. The fact, is, the grosser material nature of theman hardens itself that it will not hear the voices that are trying to teach him. Not the voices of spirits— that is not yet proven, but the voices of occult powers clamoring for release for their appointed work. We have not yet learned the alphabet of the voices of the air. When we have accomplished that we may acquire some hint of the language. Meanwhile the erratic knowledge of a new ' world is dropped here and there in dreams, visions, or the strange yearning which comes over us like a sudden intense thirst for something that is just beyond. • The light that never was on soai or land. . It comes to the writer of this paper as a sigh—not a sigh of pain or passion or regret, but the sigh that the glorified soul .might give on its first view of Heaven. It is like a strain of. sweet unearthly music as it lingers for a moment and then dies away into harmony of rest. What does it mean ? Who sighed ? Ah, that is the mystery. A lady of this city, well known, and whose word is reliable, is guided in all the perplexing events of life by Jreams. A few years ago her mother died and within the year her father married again. She was much troubled at this want of respect to her mother's memory, and on the eve of the Sunday when her father was to appear at*, church with his new bride she had a remarkable dream. ' I dreamed,' she said, ' tliat I went to church and saw my father there with his new wife. I also iv my dream saw my mother and her presence did! not seem in any way unaccountablebut it distressed me very muck be cause I seemed to know that she' was. not aware of my father's hasty marriage. „ In my dream I waited impatiently for the sermon; to endi, then I hurried out and waited in the vestibuly

for my mother. As she came out I stopped her and drew her hurriedly away, while I communicated the news that a. new wife occupied her place. She smiled a sweet seraphic smile and said, slowly : '' I knoVit. We know everything where I am and nothing has power to distress us.'

'The relief her. words-caused me in my d renin produced a reaction, which awakened me, and no scene in real life was ever more vivid than the one I have related.'

A lady who was a guest at a Washington hotel was awakened one night by the doleful howling of a dog. Not being in good health it made her very nervous and she rang for the night clerk and requested him to hare the animal driven away. But the dog returned and howled worse than ever. The lad}' again sent For the clerk and enquired if'anyone in the house was ill, and was assured that there was no case of sickness there. The dog returned when driven off, and howled at intervals all night. The guests of the hotel talked the matter over and decided that the howling meant nothing, as there was no one more than another in prospect of immediate death. But nt noon of that day a tardy chambermaid unlocked the door of the room above that occupied by the lady in question and discovered that the young man who occupied it was dead from hemorrhage of the lungs. Apparently the dumb animal had discovered by pome mysterious instinct that he was in the vicinity of death.

We pooh-pooh these things as superstitions and say they arc more coincidences iiud mean nothing. Vet our reason id oikm a less reliable guide than the instinct of the dumb animal, or the homing pigeon, that needs no chart to guide it in the channels of upper air.' The sleeping fcHows of the dead man knew not <>f his lonely passing. How was it revealed to a vagabond dog? . A highly organised nature, sitting alone at midnight reading some entrancing novel or flying abroad on the win"* of travel, is suddenly brought to a realising sense of not being alone. No one is visible, nor do the lights burn blue, but something has passed through the room aiul ft cold air is perceptible—not the chill <i the grey dawn, but rather the shadow of some hodilessprcsei.ee. And simultaneously the chill creeps over the head ot the startled or surprised occupant of the room and lifts each galvanised hair in •i way we all know of, and we flippantly say is occasioned by some one talking over our graves. \V hat is it ! The spectra of the dark with winch we cruelly Fritfiten innocent children . Or is it a confusion of the spheres wherel, v a spirit, has been jostled from its 0 its own received it not? \\ hen 0 d Lady May' came back t<. earth to amend the wrong she had «l.>«n m dvb" the girl she loved as a ea child did not know her, hut walked directly through the transparent orm. Only the dog lym« ™ t»« ™S nntl tl,c child in it*" mdle saw and knew her, and were not, afraid. A well known citizen ot Detroit, who formerly lived in an interior town in this State, came down one morning to breakfast, with :i- weaned air and disturbed countenance. H,s mot'er enquired the reason and he to d her that ho had been having a bad dream. «I dreamed,' he sa.d, 'I mt our neighbor, Mrs Jones, was killed in a Klo manner on the railroad track I wish yon would scud over and see rf anything hfls lwppcni-d to her. It was a frightful dream. Mark Lhc sequence. A year from that time the neighbor about whom he dreamed was killed by the ears m exactly the manner he had seen described in his dream. IW Uuw did fH" r»en to be foreshadowed to Imnnlone in Jucuaway? Perhaps if ho bad relaled it to her, it might have bioken the spell of doom. Ohauncey 11. Uepow, great man that ho is in «» respects, says tlmt nothing could induce him to sit down at a feast with a complemen oF tl.irteen guests. A company of thirteen sat at a table in this city some years atfo One of the company took down the mimes of those present in a notebook. A year passed and the same company had assembled to the number of twelve. . <We are all here,' said one, except- :„„ n who has our names in Ins lite-book. He will uiako the thire< Thcre was a brief silence. Then one of the company said brieJly : i C —is dead. .