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Show A DREAMER'S SENSES. If a strong light be held before the sleeper's eyes he is almost sure to awake, but at the very moment he many have a dream of some tremendous fire, perhaps that his house is in flames. The ear of the dreamer is generally on the alert, and proves a gong to the mysterious spirit to make its airy rounds. To some sleepers the sound of a flute fills the air with music, or they dream of a delightful concert. A loud noise will produce terrific thunder and crashings unutterable, and at the same time awake the sleeper. According to Dr. Abercrombie, a gentleman who had been a soldier dreamed that he heard a signal gun, saw the proceedings for displaying the signals, heard the bustle of the streets, the assembling of troops, etc. Just then he was roused by his wife who had dreamed precisely the same dream with this addition that she saw the enemy land and a friend of her husband killed, and she awoke in a fright. This occurred at Edinburgh at the time when a French invasion was feared, and it had been decided to fire a signal gun at the first approach of the foe. This dream was caused, it appears, by the fall of a pair of tongs in the room above and the excited state of the public mind was quite sufficient to account for both dreams turning on the same subject. An old lady, a friend of the writer, relates a similar dream which occurred to her just before the battle of Waterloo, when the fear of an invasion by Napoleon was at its height. She heard the march of troops in the streets, and the screams of the populace. They broke into her own house, ransacked it, and pursued her with bayonets. She fell on the floor and pretended to be dead. After sundry thrusts, which seemed to her "roving spirit" to be quite innocuous, the soldiers remarked that she was "done for." They departed, and she escaped to consciousness. This dream was no doubt caused in the first instance by a noise in the house or street, and the painless bayonet thrust by some slight irritation, such as a hairpin or other adjunct to dress. Whispering in a sleeper's ear will often produce a dream; and there are cases on record in which people who sleep with their ears open have been led through dreadful agonies at the will of their wakeful tormentors. The vivid description given of a young officer so treated by his comrades is both interesting and suggestive. In changing our position, as we constantly do in our sleep, we touch the bedclothes, etc., perhaps the nose gets tickled or the sole of the foot, and dreams painful or pleasant are the consequence. These may seem trivial causes but it must be remembered that the mind is ready to fly into the realms of fancy at the slightest intimation. People have often dreamed of spending the severest winters in Siberia and of joining the expeditions to the North Pole, simply because the bedclothes have been thrown off during sleep. It is said that a moderate heat applied to the soles of the feet will generate dreams of volcanoes, burning coals, etc. Dr. Gregory dreamed of walking up the crater of Mount Etna, and that he felt the earth warm under his feet. He had placed a hot water bottle at his feet on going to bed. The memory of a visit he had once paid to Mount Vesuvius supplied the mental picture. Persons suffering from toothache imagine that the operator is tugging at the faulty tooth, and somehow cannot extract it; or, as in Dr. Gregory's case, he draws out the wrong one, and leaves the aching tooth in statu quo. A blister applied to the head is highly suggestive of being scalped by Indians, especially if Mayne Reid's ghastly details are at all fresh in the memory.-Temple Bar |