A CURIOUS DREAM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 2039, 19 September 1874, Page 3

A CURIOUS DREAM.

{CornMll Magazine.) Perhaps the most curious specimen of this olass 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 classroom. 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 and his place of business, took no exercise. The classes he attended were formed in great part of adultß, all of whom had. muoh more leisure than himself, and most of whom were merely renewing their acquaintance with former reading ; yet the boy managed to keep abreast of the very best of his clasß-mates. Of course such exertions could, not be made by a mera oWld -wlon 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 — ti fall at once into a heavy sleep. From this, however, he was sure to start, in half-aa-hour or thereabouts, under the influence of nightmare, which compelled him to recite alond every word of the lesson of the day. The thing was most painful, but there was no escape from it.' Once in the grip of his tormenting fiend, he was constrained to goon repeating declensions, conjugations, trigonometric formulte, and so on, to the very lasl; syllable. Then the fit left him to a disturbed and unrefreshing 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 nightmare 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 was ever afterwards fixed in his memory. In tbo decline of life, he used to tell a most interesting Btb'ry of hia meeting with that face twentyfour years later, and of the decisive influence whioh its owner exercised over hia 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 certavi passage." (which we shall specify presently); you, will be set free to sleep in pe-ce." It was not until the dream recurred more than once that tbe 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 atter 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 wbt over he sink inta a calm and refreshing sleep. The experiment was repeated night alter night, and always with still more satisfactory results than before. By degrees the peefc 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 jf 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, might 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 bo vaguely, and for so short a period that he could not grasp it. To this passing idea, and to hia efforts to arrest it, he attributed — rightly, we think — the materiaLportion of the vision. i 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 dreamfeco in real life — a n tion in which he was obBbinute to an extent inconceivable in a mind so Ijgical — weinaj romark that strong imaginings r id intense affections play strangj tricks with «•'.•? impressions. ,