COINCIDENCES ?
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—As an apprentice in the barque 'Victoria Cross' of Liverpdol, loading rails for Calcutta in Middlesbro' dock some years ago, I dreamt in the early hours of one morning that my mother, whom three weeks before I bad left in apparently
perfect health, was dead, and I awoke with that conviction, and nothing I could do would rid me of it ; it hung round me all day like a fog, for there are dreams and dreams. I did not go ashore that evening with my fellow apprentices, but determined to write home and relieve my mind, and, prior to doing so, was standing by the gangway, which consisted merely of a couple of planks sloping down to the quay, having a smoke and yarn with the steward, and was telling him of my dream when the gangway shook and, as I expected, a moment after- wards a telegraph lad put his head over the rail and asked for me. Before I opened the wire I told the steward it was con- cerning my mother, and so it was, asking me to come home at once. I travelled all night and got home next afternoon just in time for the funeral ; my mother had died a couple of days before. The foregoing is only part of my dream, which involved other coincidences, strange to say, in the same connexion, but the whole yarn would be too long to be
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