A CURIOUS DREAM.

Otago Witness, Issue 1190, 19 September 1874, Page 16

A CURIOUS DREAM.

Perhaps the most curious specimen of this class of dreams that ever came under our notice was this one. The subject was a boy of thirteen, busily employed during the day, and devoting his evenings to the class-room. To allow time for study he rose early and retired late, never wasted a moment, denied himself everything in the shape of recreation, and with the exception of his walks between the schoolroom aud his place of business, took no exercise. The classes he attended were formed in great part of adults, all of whom had much more leisure than himself, and most of whom were merely renewing their acquaintance with former reading ; yet the boy managed to keop abreast of the very best of his class-mates. Of course such exertions could not be made by a mere child with impunity. After six or seven months of them, he became subject to a singular malady. He never left his books so long as his eyes would keep open. When they refused to labour longer he retired —to fall at once into a heavy sleep. From this, however, he was sure to start, in half an hour or thereabouts, under the influence of nightmare, which compelled him to recite aloud every word of the lesson of, the day. The thing was moßt painful, but there was no «pgnpe from it, Once i n the grip of his

tormenting fiend, he was constrained to go on repeating declensions, conjugations, trigonometric formulas, and so on, to the very last syllable. Then the fit left him to a disturbed and unrefreHhing slumber. There was no remedy for the disease save discontinuance of study, and to this the boy would not consent— even though this most repulsive night-mare was, visibly and rapidly, sapping his constitution. At length he was favoured with a strange dream. A face seemed to bend over him — one that he had never seen before, but whose features ever afterward tixed in his memory. In the decline of life, he used to tell a most interesting story of his meeting with that face twenty-four years later, and of the decisive influence which its owner exercised over his destiny. This face he described as beautiful, spoke in tones delightfully sweet, to this effect : "If somebody will watch by your bed and when the nightmare seizes you, recite a certain passage " (which we shall specify presently) ; " you will be set free to sleep in peace." Jt was not until the dream recurred more than once that the dreamer ventured to mention it. It was laughed at by all, save an elder sister, who made up her mind to give a fair trial to the remedy so curiously suggested. She did so when her brother was next undergoing his torture. Hardly had she begun to speak than he ceased to go over his lessons, and taking up the passage after her, he went through it to the end — quite involuntarily as before, but very differently, with an ease and comfort perfectly indescribable. "When the recitation was over he sank into a calm and refreshing sleep. The experiment was repeated night after night, and always with still more satisfactory results than before. By degrees the pest relaxed its grasp, and in nine or ten days vanished for ever. The passage employed was ' ' the Lord's Prayer."

The dreamer used to explain the matter thus : Once when thinking of this strange affliction, as he often did, and casting about for an antidote, there occurred to his memory a piece of old reading, in which it was stated that the wounds made one day by the application of heated irons, migfjt be cured on the next by a similar application. While turning the story over in his mind, a conception of the remedy which, in the end, proved beneficial, glanced before him, but so vaguely, and for so short a period that he could not grasp it. To this passing idea, and to his efforts to arrest it, he attributed — rightly, we think — the material portion of the vision. The passage recommended for recitation he accounted for by the fact that he had been piously trained. But his latter opinion was that a paragraph from a profane author would have served just as well. As in the reappearance of the dream-face in real life — a notion in which he was obstinate to an extent inconceivable in a mind so logical — we may remark that strong imaginings and intense affections play strange tricks with our impressions. — The Oornhill Magazine.