Since we look upon lotteries, in this country, as an immoral species of gambling, it may be raised as an objection to this dream, that such intelligence was an unworthy mission for a spirit, supposing the communication to have been actually made by Collin. But, in the first place, we have only to do with facts, and not with their propriety or impropriety, according to our notions; and, by-and-by, I shall endeavor to show that such discrepancies possibly arise from the very erroneous notions commonly entertained of the state of those who have disappeared from the terrestrial life.
Simonides the poet, arriving at the seashore with the intention of embarking on board a vessel on the ensuing day, found an unburied body, which he immediately desired should be decently interred. On the same night, this deceased person appeared to him, and bade him by no means go to sea, as he had proposed. Simonides obeyed the injunction, and beheld the vessel founder, as he stood on the shore. He raised a monument on the spot to the memory of his preserver, which is said still to exist, on which are engraven some lines, to the effect that it was dedicated by Simonides, the poet of Cheos, in gratitude to the dead who had preserved him from death.
A much-esteemed secretary died a few years since, in the house of Mr. R—— von N——. About eight weeks afterward, Mr. R—— himself being ill, his daughter dreamed that the house-bell rang, and that, on looking out, she perceived the secretary at the door. Having admitted him, and inquired what he was come for, he answered, “To fetch somebody.” Upon which, alarmed for her father, she exclaimed, “I hope not my father!” He shook his head solemnly, in a manner that implied it was not the old man he had come for, and turned away toward a guest-chamber, at that time vacant, and there disappeared at the door. The father recovered, and the lady left home for a few days, on a visit. On her return, she found her brother had arrived in the interval to pay a visit to his parents, and was lying sick in that room, where he died.
I will here mention a curious circumstance regarding Mr. H——, the gentleman alluded to in a former page, who, being at the seaside, saw, in a dream, the danger that awaited his son when he went to bathe. This gentleman has frequently, on waking, felt a consciousness that he had been conversing with certain persons of his acquaintance—and, indeed, with some of whom he knew little—and has afterward, not without a feeling of awe, learned that these persons had died during the hours of his sleep.
Do not such circumstances entitle us to entertain the idea that I have suggested above, namely, that in sleep the spirit is free to see, and to know, and to communicate with spirit, although the memory of this knowledge is rarely carried into the waking state?
The story of the two Arcadians, who travelled together to Megara, though reprinted in other works, I can not omit here. One of these established himself, on the night of their arrival, at the house of a friend, while the other sought shelter in a public lodging-house for strangers. During the night, the latter appeared to the former, in a dream, and besought him to come to his assistance, as his villanous host was about to take his life, and only the most speedy aid could save him. The dreamer started from his sleep, and his first movement was to obey the summons, but, reflecting that it was only a dream, he presently lay down, and composed himself again to rest. But now his friend appeared before him a second time, disfigured by blood and wounds, conjuring him, since he had not listened to his first entreaties, that he would, at least, avenge his death. His host, he said, had murdered him, and was, at that moment, depositing his body in a dung-cart, for the purpose of conveying it out of the town. The dreamer was thoroughly alarmed, arose, and hastened to the gates of the city, where he found, waiting to pass out, exactly such a vehicle as his friend had described. A search being instituted, the body was found underneath the manure; and the host was consequently seized, and delivered over to the chastisement of the law.
“Who shall venture to assert,” says Dr. Ennemoser, “that this communing with the dead in sleep is merely a subjective phenomenon, and that the presence of these apparitions is a pure illusion?”
A circumstance fully as remarkable as any recorded, occurred at Odessa, in the year 1842. An old blind man, named Michel, had for many years been accustomed to get his living by seating himself every morning on a beam in one of the timber-yards, with a wooden bowl at his feet, into which the passengers cast their alms. This long-continued practice had made him well known to the inhabitants, and, as he was believed to have been formerly a soldier, his blindness was attributed to the numerous wounds he had received in battle. For his own part, he spoke little, and never contradicted this opinion.
One night, Michel, by some accident, fell in with a little girl of ten years old, named Powleska, who was friendless, and on the verge of perishing with cold and hunger. The old man took her home, and adopted her; and, from that time, instead of sitting in the timber-yards, he went about the streets in her company, asking alms at the doors of the houses. The child called him father, and they were extremely happy together. But when they had pursued this mode of life for about five years, a misfortune befell them. A theft having been committed in a house which they had visited in the morning, Powleska was suspected and arrested, and the blind man was left once more alone. But, instead of resuming his former habits, he now disappeared altogether; and this circumstance causing the suspicion to extend to him, the girl was brought before the magistrate to be interrogated with regard to his probable place of concealment.
“Do you know where Michel is?” said the magistrate.