From these letters there can be no doubt that the coincidence made a marked impression on each of those to whom the dream was related, and this fact, perhaps even more than Captain Campbell's own narrative, is a striking proof of the exceptional nature of the experience.
There is no reason in this case for supposing that the dream conveyed any other information than the fact of the agent's death. There is no evidence that the manner of death or the clothes worn by Major Hubbersty resembled what was seen in the dream. The clothes in which the figure appeared may have been a reminiscence of clothes which the percipient had actually seen worn on some occasion by the agent. But this explanation will hardly apply to the following case, where the dream included a representation, accurate in more than one particular, of the agent as he actually appeared at the time. It is true that we have to rely upon the percipient's memory after the interval of a fortnight for the details of the dream, but since the dream was sufficiently impressive to cause a note to be taken of it by a person not in the habit of making such notes, it seems not unreasonable to trust the memory to that extent.
No, 58.—From MR. E. W. HAMILTON, C.B.
"PARK LANE CHAMBERS, PARK LANE, W.,
April 6th, 1888."On Wednesday morning, March 21st, 1888, I woke up with the impression of a very vivid dream. I had dreamt that my brother, who had long been in Australia, and of whom I had heard nothing for several months, had come home; that after an absence of twelve years and a half he was very little altered in appearance, but that he had something wrong with one of his arms; it looked horribly red near the wrist, his hand being bent back.
"When I got up that morning the dream recurred constantly to my thoughts, and I at last determined to take a note of it, notwithstanding my natural prejudices against attaching any importance to dreams, to which, indeed, I am not much subject. Accordingly, in the course of the day, I made in my little Letts' diary a mark thus: X, with my brother's name after it.
"On the following Monday morning, the 26th March, I received a letter from my brother, which bore the date of the 21st March, and which had been posted at Naples (where the Orient steamers touch), informing me that he was on his way home, and that he hoped to reach London on or about the 30th March, and adding that he was suffering from a very severe attack of gout in the left arm.
"The next day I related to some one this curious incident, and I commented on the extraordinary coincidence of facts with the dream except in one detail, and that was, that the arm which I had seen in my dream did not look as if it were merely affected with gout: the appearance it had presented to me was more like extremely bad eczema.
"My brother duly reached England on the 29th, having disembarked at Plymouth owing to the painful condition of his arm. It turned out that the doctor on board ship had mistaken the case; it was not gout, but a case of blood poisoning, resulting in a very bad carbuncle or abscess over the wrist joint.
"Since my brother's return, I have endeavoured to ascertain from him the exact hour at which he wrote to me on March 21st. He is not certain whether the letter to me was written before noon or after noon of that day. He remembers writing four short letters in the course of that day—two before luncheon and two after luncheon. Had the note addressed to me been written in the forenoon, it might nearly have coincided in time with my dream, if allowance be made for the difference of time between Greenwich and Naples; for, having no recollection of the dream when I woke, according to custom, at an early hour on the morning of the 21st, I presume I must have dreamt it very little before eight o'clock, the hour at which I was called.
"I may add that, notwithstanding an absence of twelve years and a half, my brother has altered very little in appearance; and that I have not to my knowledge ever noted a dream before in my life."
On April 12th, 1888, Mr. Gurney inspected the diary with the entry (X, Clem) under Tuesday, March 20th, 1888, though, as Mr. Hamilton explained, "it was early the next morning that I had the dream, for I generally consider all that appertains to bed relates to the day on which one gets into it".
Mr. Gurney also saw the letter signed Clement E. Hamilton, and dated Naples, March 21st, 1888, which says "am suffering from very severe attack of gout in left arm."
The next case presents several points of interest. In part, at least, it seems to have been a waking experience, possibly the prolongation of a dream. In this respect it resembles Mrs. Harrison's case, already cited (No. 54), and if correctly described, the incident possesses therefore a higher evidential value than a mere dream, however vivid. I have here classed it as a dream, however, because the percipient himself so describes it in his letter written a few days after the experience. The utterance of words by the percipient finds a parallel in the case of Archdeacon Bruce (Chapter VII., No. 51). But in the present case there is the additional feature that the percipient is conscious not only of the sound of his own voice, but of another voice in reply. The incident, it will be seen, though remote, is attested by letters written immediately after the event, and by the percipient's recollection of action taken in consequence of the dream-warning.
No. 59.—From MR. EDWARD A. GOODALL, of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours.