Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1907-04-19
"STUFF THE DREAMS ARE MADE Of .

7 ers. / give one which DR.. Carpenter
mentions in his book on Mental Phys
iology.
A professor at Amsterdam had
been given by a banking house of
that city a question to solve. involv-
ing a long and difficult calculation.
| Several times he tried to obtain the
solution, but each time he made some
mistake. At last, all wearied out,
he gave the problem to some of his
students, telling them that If possible
he would like the answer in three
days. One of them, eager to get into
his teachers good graces, took 1t
home and worked on it for three sue
ccssive nights in vain.
"At last l bent myself over my
figures for third evening. 1t was
winter, and l calculated till half-past
in the morning, all to no purpose.
The product was erroneous. Low at
heart, threw down my pencil, which
already by that time had beciphered
three states. l hesitated whether |
would toll through the night, as I
knew that the professor wanted an
answer the very same morning. But
10! my candle was already burning
in the socket, and the persons with
whom lived had gone to rest. Then
/ also went to bed, my head filled
with ciphers, and tired in mind,
fell asleep. In the morning l awoke
| just early enough to dress and pre-
pare myself to go to the lecture,
vexed at heart at not having been
able to solve the question and at hav-
ing to disappoint my teacher.
But, oh, wonderful! as / approach
my writing table, l find on it paper
with figures in my own hand and
| (think of my astonishmentD the
whole problem on it solved quite
| Alright, and without single blunder.
l wanted to ask my hostess whether
anyone had been in my room, but
was stopped by my own writing.
Thus l must have calculated the prob
| lem in my sleep and in the dark to
| boot; and what was most remark
able, the computation was SO succinct
that what | saw before me on a single
folio sheet had required three slate
| fuls, closely Deciphered on both sides,
during my waking state. Professor
Won Swinden was amazed at the
event and declared to me that whilst
calculating the problem himself he
had never once thought of a solution
so simple and concise"
A number of years ago there lived
a poor Englishman who made a pre-
carious livelihood by rolling about
| pieces of lead in a pan, so as to make
them round. At the end of the
process they were far from being
| really rOund-uneven and mishapen,
in fact-and the poor fellow, who
was near starvation, used to torment
himself with the question as to some
better way to make them really
round. One night he dreamed that IL
began to rain lead bullets, which hit
him in the face and then rolled off
perfectly round. For long time he
wondered whether dropping melted
lead would not make it round. One
day he could stand it no longer, and
taking some melted lead to the top of
tower he dropped drops of it down
and found at the bottom perfectly
round bullets. AS a result of this
lucky dream he found that he had
made his fortune and that the days
of starvation were over forever.
Thus while we sleep the hidden
forces of our mind, our Brownies, as
Robert Louis Stevenson aptly called
them, may work out results which
take us by surprise and which we in
our waking hours had given up in
despair.-Charles Smith, in Califor-
MIA News.