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Show 2 SLEEP, DEATH, DREAMS. : The Strange Analogy Tboy Bear to One Another A Trio of Wondrous Nature. INSTANCES OF STRANGE DBEAMS. The Benefit of Studying Nature Tracing Analogy in an Experience-Illogical Experience-Illogical Men. Coleridge recites an incident of hie own experience that he had composed i while asleep in a chair the poetical fragment frag-ment "Kubla Khan." lie had read in Pnrchas' "Pilgrims," "Here KubUKhan commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto, and thus ten miles of fortile ground were inclosed within a wall." The poet awoke after several hoars with the conviction that he had made two or three hundred verses. Remembering them vividly, he at once wrote them down as they are printed in hie works. Giuseppe Tartini, the most celebrated violinist of the Eighteenth century, always al-ways maintained that his finest composition, compo-sition, the "Devil's Sonata," was due to a dream. He imagined while asleep that the devil appeared and chaJferxifvd him to ft trial of skill on his favorit Instrument. In-strument. Accepting the challenge, the fiend began a solo that fascinated the musician as he listened. The moment the apparition vanished Tartini awoke, dashed down the notes as nearly as he could recall them, and played them afterward in pnblio to its enthusiastic admiration. Many such eases might be cited, cases that rent on excellent authority. It mast be admitted, however, that dreams are for the most part incoherent and inso-qnential, inso-qnential, and do not help us to solve the intricacies and problems of life. Any number of prophetic dreams are recorded. One of the most memorable is recounted by Plntarch the familiar dream of Calphnrnia the night before the Idos of March. She felt assured by it that Ceesar's life was threatened, and besought be-sought him not to go to the senate. He was so moved by her entreaties, especially especial-ly an she was not superstitious, that be would have remained at home but for the urgency of Decius Albinus, one of the conspirators in whom he trusted. He could not bear to be suspected of fear, being bravery itself, and so went to his death. That a woman like Calpburnia should have been influenced by dreams is most remarkable. Dr. Mocario, fn his work on "Sleep and Dreams," mentions a perfectly authenticated au-thenticated case. In Charit6-sur-Loire, a small French village a very pretty but poor girl was sought in marriage by a young man of means. Her parent favored fa-vored his suit, but she rejected him. They importuned her until she prayed to the Virgin for guidance. The samo night she dreamed of a young man in traveler's garb who asked her to be his wife. In the morning she recited to her parents what had passed in her vision, and they ceased to urgo her marriage. Not long after she recognized at a village ball the young man of her dream; his figure, features, every detail of his dress corresponding thereto. She blushed; he noticed her, obtained an introduction, and speedily became her husband. He was Eraile de la Bedolliere, on the staff of The Paris Siocle, and he wrote Ma-cario Ma-cario corroborating the story in every particular. Her name was Angole Bobin, who had given to her teacher some time before meeting the journalist an accurate accu-rate description of his person. John Beaumont publishes in his "Treatise "Trea-tise of Spirits" a story told nearly two hundred hun-dred years ago by Sir Charles Lee to the Bishop of Gloucester, and by the bishop to him, of his daughter's extraordinary death. She was engaged to be married, and having gone to bed on a Thursday night in excellent health, awoke about 2 a. ra. to see an apparition near her pillow. pil-low. The apparition said: "I am your mother; I am happy. By noon today you will be happy too. You will be with me." The young lady knocked for her maid, but could get no clew to the mystery, mys-tery, whioh had deeply impressed her. She dressed herself, wrote to her father ehe was living with her aunt and requested, re-quested, that the letter be sent him as soon as she was dead. Her aunt thought she had lost her reason, and summoned a physician. He came, but could discover dis-cover no indications of mental or physical ailment. The young lady asked that the chaplain should read prayers, which h did. Then she took her guitar, played delightfully until near 13 o'clock, when she took another chair, and on the strike of the hour drew a long breath and passed away. Dr. Macnish, who has no faith in dreams except as phenomena, narrates a remarkable experience of his own in his "Philosophy of Sleep." He was in Caithness, Caith-ness, Scotland, when he dreamed that a New York, Aug. 0. Although the great majority of civilized human beings be-ings are strongly attached to life under anything like favorable conditions, and seem to shrink instinctively from the idea of annihilotion, they invariably enjoy en-joy sound, unbroken, oblivious sleep, and speak of it as a rare blessing of nature. Yet such sleep is, so far as we may judge, u counterfeit and exact counterpart of death, which is declared to be the king of terror. How is this glaring inconsistency to be reconciled? Most persons would say that they relteh sleep because it is good for them, because be-cause it is restorative, because it is brief. Hare they any reason for thinking that , death is not good for them, even better than sleep, since it is eternal? Men are always illogical A strange analogy pervades the universe. Sleep and death, as has frequently been said, are brothers. They must be equally desirable. Both of them must give us rest one at close of day, the other at close of life. We sleep every fifteen to eighteen hours. Wo die consciously but once. We imagine that we compre-J compre-J bend sleep. Death we account a mystery, mys-tery, and, being mysterious, it is alarming. alarm-ing. But do wo comprohend sleep and its concomitant dreams? Not at all. Dreams have puzzled sages from time out of mind, and puzzle them still They are far more unintelligible than death. This seems to be simply the end of activity, the stop of functions, the finality of motors. It is no task to con-: con-: oeive of the termination of anything; tbe more complicated a thing is the more natural that it should terminate. Dreams appear to be a sort of life, different dif-ferent from and yet analogous to our normal life, while the normal life is suspended. sus-pended. We generally lose while dreaming all power of will, all control of current thoughts which go on un-limitedly, un-limitedly, involving us in contradictions, contradic-tions, absurdities, impossibilities. We appear to share the same feelings, to cherish the same passions, to perform the same acts as in our waking hours. Nevertheless, in coming ont of dreamland dream-land we remember that we were not our ' actual selves there; that our principles, princi-ples, our morals, our judgments were changed. Things that are clear, consistent, perfectly per-fectly natural during deep become intangible, in-tangible, inconceivable, unthinkable on our return to the familiar world. Plato seeks to explain this by the theory that in dreams our souls are freed from the body, have higher conceptions, more luminous ' visions, deeper insight, and that when fettered and obscured again by the body we cannot grasp their import. Philosophers Philoso-phers and poets in every age have had numberless fantasies and conceits on this subject and have given them plausible names. But we can reach no conclusion. We are no wiser in the last quarter of , the Nineteenth century than were the mystagogues two thousand years ago. Dreams are curious studios, are exceedingly exceed-ingly suggestive, are full of interest, but they baffle us at every turn. Sometimes dreams appear more real, more harmonious, more satisfactory than life itself. How can we tell whether we are awake or dreaming; where dream ends and life begins? Our supposed life may be dream. Our supposed dream may be life. Philosophers have declared that neither time nor space e lints; that there is nothing eternal only our idea of the external. Is it singular that in this clash of opinions, this contradiction of teaching, men, losing faith in one thing after another, finally become universal skeptics? If Pyrrho, the Grecian, could v be such a skeptio twenty-two hundred years ago the present time should abound ' in Pyrrhomists. near kinsman, residing 300 miles di tant, had iuddenly died. . He awoke in terror, and the same day, -writing homo, referred to the circumstance half jestingly. jest-ingly. He could not help feeling; a presentiment pre-sentiment of evil, and yet he blamed himself for what seemod to be a childish weakness. Three days after posting his letter he got one, written the day before his, which announced that on the very day of the morning of his dream his kinsman had died of a paralytio stroke, though up to that moment ho had appeared ap-peared to be in perfect health. The majority of men have a vein of superstition, unwilling though they may be to confess it. Many think they are not superstitious because they have not the superstitions that aro commonly t,o called. My superstition may be that I believe myself without superstition. I have no faith in theology or in dreams. One eeoms wholly irrational; the other, while curious, interesting, suggestive, is entirely indefinite. I have often thought that some of the loading theories of theology, the-ology, like its gorm, may have been derived de-rived from dreams, which were evidently tho visions of the old monks and fathers of the church. Have not the vulgar ideas of heaven and hell been got from good and bad1 dreams? Sleep and death are so analogous that this might readily be. So sleep, death and dreams run parallol, and by vigilant watching and persistent study of nature we may yet loam, if not their searets, much of their significance. , Jraics Henri Browne. May not death be a dream of life! . May not life bo the death of dream? If we should die and may we not? as often of-ten as we sleep, death would lose its solemnity. We should think no more of dying than of taking our breakfast; and breakfast may, after all, be more important im-portant thun onr exit from the planet. Nature takes no account of the individual. We are wholly without consequence save in our own partial eyes. Flimsy as dreams may appear they have played most prominent part in the history of humanity. The influence that they have esercised is beyond estimation. The origin of theology, the primal idea of a power above ourselves, the earliest apprehension ap-prehension of what we call God, may nave come from dreams. Hobbes has said that the genesis of God is the dread of an unknown power. The uncivilised man may lave been frightened by his dreams, and from these may have been evolved, gradually of course, what ulti-xnately ulti-xnately became a theologio system. This la a philosophic, not an orthodox view, which is basid, it is believed, on inspiration. inspira-tion. Dreams differ widely with different persons. Some of these seem to have a genius for dreaming. They dream ra-t ra-t tionally, consecutively, to positive advantage. ad-vantage. No doubt all of ns dream. Preams are the natural attendants and outcome of sleep. But many who forget for-get their dreams on waking believe that they have not dreamed. We often rise In the morning, and should not think of our dreams over night if Borne occurrence occur-rence of the day did not recall them. So strange, so coincidental, so uuac-countable uuac-countable are dreams often that it is sot singular they have been considered supernatural by those the least disposed to superstition, full of dread, warning and prophecy. Some accredited dreams that sound like fiction are worth chronicling. chroni-cling. Condorcet, the renowned French mathematician and philosopher (he wrote in favor of American independence, independ-ence, advocated republican principles, and committed suicide to avoid execution execu-tion 'by the extremists of the French revolution whtf had proscribed him for being a Girondist), worked out in a dream a very difcult proposition that had baffled him during tho day. Condillao asserted that while writing his elaborate "Course of Studies" he fre-, fre-, quontly finished in bis dreams chapters which he had failed to conclude before |