[To THE EDITOR 01 THE "SPECTATOR, "]
Sra,—Your correspondent "A. B." dreamt that her son was ill, and the dream proved true. There is nothing wonderful in that. As to the phantasm and his speech—pooh ! She was still dreaming when she saw and questioned " Tom." She says she was awakened by " seeing " him, which can only mean that she was not awake when she saw him first ; in other words, that she had the very ordinary experience of being suddenly wakened up by a particularly vivid dream. " His form gradually became fainter and vanished." Precisely; she was losing her dream, though her eyes might be open. And the sounds as well as the sights of a dream (given a slightly abnormal condition of mind or body) may go over into the half-consciousness between sleep and waking, so as to cause an impression of their externality. " A. B.," having expressed to her " son " her surprise at his appearing, " thought " that he answered so-and-so ; only " thought "—that is significant. The coincidence between what she thought he said (" I did so want to come home mother, I feel so ill ") and what he wrote next day (that he "felt very bad yesterday " and wished he could be with his mother) admits of a simple explanation. One occasionally hears, when (say) a peculiar accident has happened, that somebody had dreamt it the night before. If one had beard the dream prior to the accident, one might wonder. So, unless "A. B." can produce the words she ascribes to the phantasm, and can prove, to the satisfaction of a lawyer, that they were recorded on the day of the supposed interview, we are at liberty to believe that her recollection of the words took shape under the unconscious influence of her son's letter.
" A. B.'s " story is of a type familiar to students of psychical literature, but the one told by " Vectensis " is fresh enough. A boy fell from a carriage, a heavy carriage "drawn by a pair of horses and loaded with luggage." He was picked up unhurt—" not a mark or bruise on the body." That being so, one would think it " obvious to the meanest capacity " that the boy fell clear of the wheels. But " Vectensis " says "fell, the wheels of the carriage passing over him." He says this, taking for granted that the wheels passed over the boy. He never alleges that anyone saw the boy under the wheels. When the father got out he expected to find his son mortally hurt, not because anyone had seen the boy under the wheels, but because " all in the carriage felt the tilt of the wheels as they passed over the body." Why " as they passed over the body "? If anyone had seen the wheels passing over the body, " Vectensis " would not have mentioned the tilt at all. The tilt is important just lecause no accident was visible except that the boy fell. The assertion that the wheels passed over the body is therefore a gratuitous addition to the
statement that they tilted ; and, as the boy got off without a scratch, why may we not suppose that the wheels went over something else P Now for the boy's explanation of his safety. He said that a little boy had " lifted the wheels," had " held up the wheels." When there is no evidence that the wheels ever touched him, it is not hard to believe' that he was saved without the intervention of a supernatural power. A child of six can easily see an angel lifting wheels. There is no mystery here; but how wheels, when they are lifted and held up, can pass over a body and tilt with the effort—that is a
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