WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXII, Issue 52, 26 April 1895, Page 9

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

In s recent lecture at the Boy«l Institution, Dr B. W. Richardson says that the sleep of health is dreamless. " Dreams," says Shakes* peart, " are children of an idle brain." If both the doctor and the poet are right it follows that idle brains are unhealthy bra'ne. No doubt there might be truth in the inference, bit that ia sot quite the point. Are all dreams signß of a diseased condition ? To this the doctor says "No." He divides dreams into two classes; those started by noises or other causes outside the sleeper, and those produced by pain, fever, or indig stion. Here we inject a fact. We receive multitudes of letters containing tbiq affirmation, almost in identical words : " I was morse tired in tlie morning than when 1 went to bed " To this the doctor t>»B an answer. He says, " When me feel neat led in the morning very likely it results from, dreams that we have forgotten? Quite ■•>. In other woide there is a bodily condition which may prevent a person from working by day at his usual calling, but obliges him to to labour all night under a mental stimulus of which be knows nothing save by its resulting exhaustion, These unhappy wretches toil harder, therefore, for no compensation, when they are ill, than they have to do to earn a living when tb«y are well. What an infernal and frightful fact 1 And this too withont taking into account their physical suffering at all times, "Night," said Coleridge, " is my hell." From one of the letters referred to we quote what a woman says of her daughter : " She was worse tired in a morning than when the went to bed." Poor girl. Those " forgotten dreams " had tossed her about as a ship is tossed in a tempest. Night was her day of labonr. The mother's simple tale is this : "In June, 1890, my daughter Ann Elizabeth became low, weak, and fretful, and complained of pain in the chest after eating. Next ber stomach was so irritable 1 that she vomited all the food she took. It was awful to see her heave and strain. For three weeks nothing passed throngh her ftomach except a little soda water and lime water. Later on, her feet and legs began to swell and puff from dropsy. She was now pale as death and looked as though she bad not a drop of blood in her body, and was always cold. MoDth after month dragged by and she got weaker every day. She could not walk without support, for she had lost the proper use of ber legp, and her body swayed from side to side as she mover*. " A doctor attended her for twelve montbc, and finally said it waß no use piving ber any more medicine as it w^uld do no good. In May, 1891, I took her to the Dewsbury Infirmary. Bbc got no better there, and I thought I was surely to lose her. She was then thirteen years of age. " One day a lady (Mrs Ligbtoller) called at my shop, and seeing how bad my daughter was, spoke of a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup, and persuaded us to try it. I got a bottle from the Thornhill Co-operative Stores, and she began taking it. In two days she found a li tie relief ; the sickness was not so frequent. She kept on with the Syrup and steadily improved. Soon she was strong as ever, and has snee been in the best of health and can take any kind of food . After she had taken the Syrup only two weeks the neighbours were surprised at nor improved appearance and I told them what hid brought it about — that Seigel's Syrup had done what the doctors could not do, it saved her life. Yours truly, (Signed), (Mrs,) Sarah Ann Sheai d, 19, Brewery Lane, Thornhill Lees, near Dewsbury, October 11th, 1892." The inciting cause of ail this young girl's pitiful snffering was indigestion and dyspepsia, dropsy being one of its most dangerous symitoms. It attacks both youth and age, i's fearful and often fatal results being duo to the fact that physicians usually treat the symptoms instead of the disease itself. " A child's dreams," says Dr Richardson, " are signs of disturbed health and should be regarded with anxiety." The same is true of ti,e dr. ams of older people. They mean poison in the stomach and point to the immediate use of Mother Seigel's Oarative Syrup.

A special tribunal has been instituted in Egypt for dealing with crimes and offences committed by natives aganst British officers and Boldiers. Princ.; Eduard Schonberg, son of Prince Schoburg, Vice-presi-dent of the Anstrian Upper House, has taken the vows as a priest of the Order of Benedictines. Several divers hive been engaged to search in the ill-fated Elbe for valuable posts 1 properties that went down with the steemer. Taese represent a sum of no less than £18,000. The Pope has an egg which be received from an English lady ore Faster. The shell is made of ivory, its lining i« of white satin, and the yolk is a golden case containing a ruby set in diamonds. The whole is worth upwards of £2,000. Baron Hermann Koenigswarter, whose wi r e, in tbs lifetime of the late Baron, becatte a Jewess in order to be able to marry him, has now been christened by the Bishop of Grosswardein, His wife has also returned to the True Faitb.- Baron Koenigswarter presented the bishop with a diamond ring worth 50,000 florin i. Tbe appointment of Lord Ac on bb Professor of Modern History at Cambridge will not involve tLe relinguishmeut of the position which he holds in tbe Government, The noble Lord ia one of the Lorde-in- Wait ing, and represents the Irish Government in tbs House of Lords, Tbe Law Journal pa>s a deserved tribute to Lord Chief Justice Russell. "We all expected him," it saye, "to keep a firm rein over tbe proceedings of his Court. But some of us, perhaps, did not anticipate that he would, at least at the very outset of his judicial career, exhibi the patience, the self-restraint, and tbe evenness of judgment which he has already evinced. The possibility that he might at first be somewhat defective in these qualities was the only cloud that hung over tbe horizon of his judicial work. Lord Russell has effectually dissipated them, and be bids fair to be as great a Chief Justice as Sir Alexander Cockburn."