"His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to him, he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his mind. In dreams men are not supprised at such apparitions. Mr. R——d thought he informed his father of the cause of his distress, adding, that the payment of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him, because he had a strong consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to acquire any evidence in support of his belief. 'You are right, my son,' replied the paternal shade; 'I did acquire right to these tiends, for payment of which you are now prosecuted. The papers relating to the transaction are in the hands of Mr. ——, a writer (or attorney), who is now retired from professional business, and resides at Inveresk, near Edinburgh. He was a person whom I employed on that occasion for a particular reason, but who never, on any other occasion, transacted business on my account. It is very possible,' pursued the vision, 'that Mr. —— may have forgotten a matter which is now of a very old date; but you may call it to his recollection by this token,—that when I came to pay his account, there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of gold, and that we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern.'
"Mr. R——d awoke in the morning with all the words of the vision imprinted on his mind, and thought it worth while to ride across the country to Inveresk, instead of going straight to Edinburgh. When he came there, he waited on the gentleman mentioned in the dream, a very old man; without saying anything of the vision, he inquired whether he remembered having conducted such a matter for his deceased father. The old gentleman could not at first bring the circumstance to his recollection, but on mention of the Portugal piece of gold, the whole returned upon his memory; he made an immediate search for the papers, and recovered them; so that Mr. R——d carried to Edinburgh the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of losing.
"The author's theory is, that the dream was only the recapitulation of information which Mr. R——d had really received from his father while in life, but which at first he merely recalled as a general impression that the claim was settled. It is not uncommon for persons to recover, during sleep, the thread of ideas which they have lost during waking hours.
"It may be added, that this remarkable circumstance was attended with bad consequences to Mr. R——d, whose health and spirits were afterwards impaired by the attention which he thought himself obliged to pay to the visions of the night."
An instance which is related by Mrs. Crowe, receives its explanation also from this source.
"A case occurred not many years since in the North of Scotland, where a murder having been committed, a man came forward, saying, that he had dreamt that the pack of the murdered pedlar was hidden in a certain spot; whereon, a search being made, it was actually found. They at first concluded he was himself the assassin, but the real criminal was afterwards discovered; and it being asserted, though I have been told erroneously, that the two men had passed some time together, since the murder, in a state of intoxication, it was decided that the crime, and the place of concealment, had been communicated to the pretended dreamer," &c.
If the statement that the murderer and the dreamer had spent some time together in a state of intoxication, after the murder had been committed, be correct, the supposition that the murder had been communicated to the dreamer, forgotten when the state of intoxication had passed away, but subsequently recalled during the progress of a dream, affords an easy and natural explanation of the whole matter.
As an example of that class of dreams which are inexplicable, but which, unfortunately, are of little weight from the imperfect authority upon which they are given, and from the fact that they bear intrinsic evidence of having been received without inquiry into the circumstances under which they occurred, and the fallacies to which the dreamer and subsequent details had been exposed, we quote the following from the works of the Rev. John Wesley.[73]
"Among the congregation at Ambleside were a gentleman and his wife, who gave me a remarkable relation. She said she had often heard her brother relate, what an intimate acquaintance had told her, that her husband was concerned in the rebellion of 1745. He was tried at Carlisle, and found guilty. The evening before he was to die, sitting and musing in her chair, she fell fast asleep. She dreamed one came to her and said, 'Go to such a part of the wall, and among the loose stones you will find a key, which you must carry to your husband.' She waked; but thinking it a common dream, paid no attention to it. Presently she fell asleep again, and dreamed the very same dream. She started up, put on her cloak and hat, and went to that part of the wall, and among the loose stones found a key. Having, with some difficulty, procured admission into the gaol, she gave this to her husband. It opened the door of his cell, as well as the lock of the prison door.(!) So at midnight he escaped for life."
It is not uncommon to find persons asserting that they have had dreams which have prefigured events, often trivial, in the common run of life.