The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-11
A MAINE woMANs DREAM.


 Sam's Failure to Raise the Wreck of
 the Maine?
 The wreck of the battleship Maine still protrudes above the water in the busiest part of the harbor of Havana, and is not only an eyesore but an ob- struction to navigation and a grievous reminder of one of the most lamentable tragedies in history It has remained in history. It has remained in that way for nine years up to February 16 and although two contracts for it's removal l have been made, neither has been car ried out, and it must remain until the | Government of the United States re- moves it, because the Cubans have neither the skill nor the enterprise nor the facilities for doing so. The wreck l lies in six fathoms of water and has gradually settled into the mud and filth which has accumulated on the bottom of the bay from the sewage of nearly four centuries. No accident has yet | happened. but the wreck is a continual peril to navigation. The passenger ships from New York, New Orleans, Mexico and Florida anchor immediate l ly around it.
 There is a general belief that the Government does not raise the wreck because it would show that it was due to an internal explosion, the result of | spontaneous combustion in the coal i bunkers and not to a Spanish torpedo This theory of the internal explosion is accepted by the contractors, who have offered to raise the wreck, as the H%sult of the reports of their divers, which reports are very different from those given to the Court of Inqury shortly after the tragedy. Be this as it may, the difference of opinion recalls curious story which has had consider able weight, not only with superstitious people, but no less with hard-headed practical sensible men, like Senator Frye, Admiral Bradford and others from the State of Maine, who know the character and antecedehts of the wife of a druggist in the City of Lewiston, who saw the tragedy rehearsed in q dream the night that it occurred. She is not professional clairvoyant; she does not pretend to possess super natural powers, but has foretold local events in that community in a most ex- traordinary manner, until the people credit her with the gift of divination and the power of prophecy.
 l This woman never saw battleship; she never saw a fortress she was never in Havana, nor had she ever read de- scription of the harbor or surroundings of that city. She was entirely ignorant of the existence of the battleship l Maine; she was not aware that any vessel of the United States Navy was at Havana, but upon awakening one morning she was told her husband what she had seen in a dream. He was so much impressed that after breakfast he stopped in the office of one of the most reputable lawyers of the city, who re- turned with him to his house and heard the woman repeat her story. She described the harbor of Havana, the Cabanas fortress and the anchorage of | the Maine with great detail, and she said that she saw two men in the uni- form of Spanish officers, which she de- scrlbed, although she had never seen 1t in her life, hold heated controversy in a small room in the fortress, where an electric switchboard, like that in the telephone exchange in Lewiston, was connected with wires that ran down into the water to floating torpedies, which she also mlnutely described. Af- ter their controversy the younger of the two officers, protesting earnestly against being compelled to obey such an order and threatening to throw the entire responsibility upon his superior, went to the switchboard, pulled brass plug from one socket and put 1t in an- other. Thereupon terrible explosion occurred instantly and the ship in the harbor which she had described and called the Maine was blown to frag- ments and sank to the bottom
 About five hours later came the news of the destruction of the battleship by some mysterious agency in the harbor of Havana, and, naturally, the story of the druggists wife, having been told before she could have known anything concerning that event, created a pro- found sensation Havana Letter of William D. Curtis to Chicago Record Herald.