NOT A DREAM.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECrATOR.••] SIB,—I send you this letter, as fit reading for Christmastide. It deals with the marvellous, it tells of great human kindness, and it is strictly true. Some time ago, I spent a Christmas on the south-east shore of Lake Superior, where I made the acquaintance of one whom I will call Job Spring. We became friends, and I lived in his house for nearly a year. I had thus ample opportunity for knowing him. He was of very humble origin, a native of the north of Ireland, but he spent the whole of his youth in Scotland, where he learnt the trade of a miner. From Scotland he emigrated to New York State, following his trade there, and earning eight dollars a week. Ten years later he went to Lake Superior, and became the captain of the Franklin Copper Mine, on Portage Lake. At this time he fell sick of a fever, and would have died, but for the merciful interposition of a lady whose husband was a Director of the Franklin Mining Company, and whom I will call Mr•s. Adams. She found Captain Spring miserably lodged, and she had him carried to her own house, where she nursed him, and otherwise looked. after him until he recovered his health. He was a man of pro- digious strength, more than six feet high, with clear, blue eyes, a monstrous large head, and with most shapely hands. He was quite illiterate, but of undaunted courage and great ingenuity. More than seven years elapsed between this time of his sickness and the event which I am now to tell of. It occurred during the Christmas-time, when I lived in Captain Spring's house. One evening he came into my room in an excited state, looking like an actor• playing the part of a madman. " I want you," he said, "to write a letter for me, and to take notice and remember everything I do and say this night." The letter which I wrote at his dictation was as follows :—
" December 22nd.
"DEAR MRS. ADAMS,—I send you by to-night's mail two thousand dollars, which I hope will arrive safe, and be of use to you. Please let me hear from you on receipt. (Signed,) Jon SmuNc."
Having written the latter•, and packed up the dollars, we both went to the village to "mail" the money, which, with the letter, was despatched that night to Mrs. Adams, who was then living more than a thousand miles away. On our way back home, my friend's mood entirely changed. He became hot with rage, and swore that if those two thousand dollars did not reach their des-
tination in safety, he " would pursue the thieves who stole it to perdition." All through that night he had no sleep and no rest, and the next day he spent alone, keeping aloof from everybody, and smoking a great deal of tobacco. The next morning, that is, the 24th, he brought me a letter, which he requested me to open
and read. It was as follows :— " DEAR CAPTAIN SPRING,—I write to tell you that we are in great distress. We have sold everything we could to buy bread, and now we have no bread, and nothing to sell. Mr. Adams is very ill, our two sons, Willie and Joe, were killed in the battle of Gettysburgh, and we are all alone now ; if you can help us, do, and God will reward you,—at least, such is my hope, for we may never be able to do so ourselves.—Your friend, Lucy ADAMS."
On reading this aloud, my eccentric friend burst into a loud laugh ; he then nearly knocked me down by a blow on the right shoulder ; he leaped over the chairs, and at last he seized me by the arm and carried me into the neighbouring fields of bright snow, to tell me that " she had got the money." He was just as mad to look at as he was on the evening when he came into my room to ask me to write the letter to Mrs. Adams. He then told me that be had seen this lady on that evening, " sitting alone in a house with nothing in it,—no fire and no food. She was looking very calm and quiet, just exactly with the same face she had when she nursed me in the fever." Thereupon he sent off $2,000,—that is certain ; it is also certain that the Captain's letter• and Mrs. Adams' crossed each other. The money arrived safely in due course, and I leave the readers of this story to draw their own conclusions from these strange, but not, I am thankful to say, absolutely uncommon facts.—I am,
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