The Palatka daily news. (Palatka, Fla.) 1884-1888, 1886-11-03
In DREAMLAND.
A REMARKABLE VISION AND ITS
PROBABLE EXPLANATION.

PROBABLE EXPLANATION.
What Lord Brougham Says Of Dreams.
A Summer Loafer's Experience-Cole-
ridges "KubIa Khan "-How the Soul
Suffers During Sleep.
remarkable dream was related by Rev.
p D. Grafton in the personal knowledge OF
Rev Mr. Gregory, both well known ministers
in Texas In Denton county, some years
since gentleman was sick enough to require
some attention at night No one thought the
sick man dangerously ill. A friend sat with
him till midnight, giving medicine. The sick
man resting comfortably and no more to be
done by direction of the physician, the
watcher, getting drowsy, leaned his chair
against the foot of the bed and fell asleep.
He dreamed he saw the soul of the sick friend
come out of his mouth, get on the floor, go be
hind chair, try to hide behind another, then
behind the wardrobe, finally crouch by the
fireplace. The devil entered the room and
followed the soul in every step it had taken,
behind the chairs, wardrobe, then before it,
at the fireplace, when the soul gave piercing
shrek and awoke the sleeper to find his sick
friend deadl A man dead whom no one ex-
pected to diel
This was related to show the communica-
ton between the soul in the body and that of
one in the other world, or departing. Is this
true? L do not think the question can be an
swered in the affirmative with such proof as
offered in the occurrence related or any of a
similar nature. l affirm that the sleeping
man was awakened by the scream of his dy
ing friend or some other noise, if any, and
that the dream may have occupied only the
fractional part of a second. The sleeper may
have had this distempered dream and awak-
Ia iv,h
chair to find his friend dead He went to
sleep rejecting on sickness, possibly death.
The two thoughts are almost if not quite in
separable.
THINKING DURING SLEEP.
Dreaming is thinking during sleep. Lord
Brougham probably devoted more attention
in a learned, scientific way to the study Of
dreams than any other writer worth mention
ing, though many distinguished scholars have
thought and written much on the same sub
ject. A writer puts the matter tersely thus:
Dreams have, in all ages and countries,
been believed in as indications of the future;
and of all forms of superstition. this is, per-
haps the most excusable." Lord Brougham
said all our dreams occur either Just as we
go to sleep or as we wake. In the main this
is correct, but it is established that there are
exceptions / believe the sleeper who awak-
ened to find his friend dead dreamed as he
awoke. He may not have slept more than a
second Sir Benjamin Brodie relates of Lord
Holland: Son one occasion when he was
fatigued, while listening to a friend reading
aloud, he feel asleep, and had a dream, the
particulars of which it would have occupied
him quarter OF an hour or longer to express
in writing. After he awoke he found that he
remembered the beginning of one sentence,
while he actually heard the latter part of the
sentence Immediately following it, so that
probably the whole time during which he
slept did not occupy more than few sec
onds"
Last summer, where / now write, was en-
gagged. An easy-going loafer came in. /
continued to read or write. He placed his
chair against the wall and fell asleep. 1 ac-
cidentally knocked n book Off the table. He
jumped nearly out of his chair and thanked
me for awaking him from a troubled dream,
in which he was engaged in a fight A pistol
shot had just been fired, he said. This man
had been involved in his ungoverned passion
in a petty quarrel He was brooding over it I;
expected to shoot some one or get shot. Had
told me a short time before The noise of the
falling book caused him to dream of the
fight with pistols, also awakened him from a
dream that seemed to him to extend over
considerable time. / knew it was only the
fractional part of II second.
CoLERIDGE'S "KUBLA KHAN"
Coleridgc'S @hubla Khan was a fragment
of 200 or 500 lines that he dreamed after
reading in his chair: Here the Khan Kubla
commanded palace to be built" etc. Tar
tint composed the Devils Sonata" while
dreaming. If it is objected that all this
could not 10 done in the fractional part Of a
second of time, l would answer: What is the
experience of him whose life Is suddenly i'm
periledl y flash Of the mind illumines the
whole life that Is past. | thought | would be
killed by horse running away with me,
some years ago. Though well occupied in
controlling the brute, flying rs the wind
along n dangerous locality, my mind swept
more rapidly over scenes from childhood on
over thirty years. and failed not to flee into
my very pocket to note a letter, with favor
able answer, From the girl left behind me, /"
received by that mornings mail-all this as
plunged through few seconds toward death.
a lifetime COMPRESSED into time too short to
reckon.
Locke s,ys: III the soul doth think in q
sleeping man, without being conscious of it,
l ask whether, during such thinking, it has
any pleasure or pain, or is capable of happi-
ness or miseryi' While / would prefer to
turn Locke over to Cousin, Reid, Dugald
Stewart, Hamilton, Mil, Brown or Ferrier,
yet, remembering that Locke died in 1904,
venture to answer in the affirmative. Who
has not awakened I'm tears.r Whose soul has
not suffered in sleep! Who has not had his
mind, soul, spirit tickled by some odd fancy
while sleeping, and been awakened convulsed
with laughter! Who has not seen the babe,
crowned with the age of day, smile seraph-
ically as en angels wing brushed a dream
over its inmate ideas:"-Drummond Burch
in Courier-Journal.
1t Happened Once