The Brecon Reporter and South Wales General Advertiser

1 A DREAM SKETCH. A few evenings since I called to see my friend, Dr. Lord. After the news of the day had been discussed, and he had given me the details of a critical surgical operation which he had performed only the day before, he remarked that as I came in he had just been read- ing a few anecdotes ef Dr. Rush. And," said he, that relating to the subject of dreams called to mind an experience of my own. I do not pretend to say that there have not been dreams of surpassing wonder; but I am convinced that they are, after all, the result of operations of psychological laws, which, if properly understood, would render dreams as simple and easy of solution as are the phenomena of our waking- senses. It will not do to cry out humbug against everything we cannot com- prehend nor do I believe it necessary to attach so much wonder and marvel to these unusual events. I can trace out and lay bare every nerve, muscle, ligament, 'artery and vein of the human body, and I can clearly demonstrate to my class in pnyeicai dynamics exactly how all these different parts of the body work. I can show how that wonderful net-work of nerves connects every part of the body with the brain; but when I am asked to show the connection between these nerves and the MIND, or WILL, I am at a loss. I can talk of the electric fluid, more subtle than nerve-matter, and more gross than mind; and by the galvanic battery I can demonstrate how this subtle agent can operate upon the muscles of the human body. But still, when we have reached the existence of this electric fluid, and clearly demonstrated its office, we are forced to stop. The grand power that sits upon the throne of the soul, and sends its mandates of will along the highways and byeways of the nervous system, is as far above our understand- ing as is the mystery of Eternity itself. "But enough of this. If I keep on much higher, I shall be very apt to find myself straying away into the realms of theology, and there I should certainly be lost. So I will tell you the story I had in mind when I spoke of Dr. Rush. "When I had finished my medical studies-or, I should say, when I had graduated and received my diploma-I not only found myself very poor in health, but also very poor in purse. I was advised by one or two of the professors to take a little recreation before I settled down for practice. I was told that I had better travel. It was all very well to tell me this but seeing that I had paid almost my last shilling to those very professors, I could not well see how I was to follow their advice. So I went home, thinking to spend a few weeks with my widowed mother, and arrange some satisfactory and feasible plan for the future. In my native village was a manufacturing ilrm.- Graves and Hapgood-which had been established while I had been in college. Hapgood had been my play- mate and schoolmate in other years, and was still my warm friend; and when I told him, in the course of common conversation, how I was situated, he informed me that he had just the thing for me. He could put me in the way of travelling for both health of body and health of purse. He and his partner had just ob- tained a patent. It was a grand thing—a thing needed by every farmer—and if I would accept an agency for the disposal of town and county rights, he was confident I should make a good thing of it. At first the idea did not strike me favourably; but after much reflection I determined to try it. The firm allowed me to select my own ground, and when my decision had been made, they furnished me with the necessary certificate, and I started off on my travels. I had nothing to do with selling the manufactured article. I only sold the right to manufacture and vend, taking a single machine along with me that I might demonstrate its virtues. Had I possessed money of my own I should never have succeeded in such a business; but my poverty spurred me to exertion, and I did well. In less than three months, in addition to some X2,000 which I had remitted to the firm from time to time, I brought nearly .21,000 home with me when I returned. The next day, in my study, I completed my ac. counts, and made a pile of the bills and notes which were due to the firm, and having out a strip of paper about half an inch wide, I folded it round the pile in the form of a band, and secured it with a wafer. Then I leaned back in my chair and wondered what I would do if all that money were mine. What volumes of valuable books should adorn my library; and what splendid cases of surgical instruments I would buy t I would have the most complete assortment of knives, and saws, and forceps, and machinery for reducing dis- locations and setting broken bones, that ever was. And from this my imagination wandered forward to the great times that were to come —when my name should be a household word, and when, far and near, people should send for me whenever a capital case in surgery was to be performed. "I was in the midat of this day-dream when my mother came to my deor and asked me to walk with her in the garden, and thus I was engaged for, perhaps, fifteen or twenty minutes. I was just think. ing of going to overhaul some old newspapers which were piled away in my own room, when it occurred to me that I had left the pile of notes upon my desk, and I made all haste back to my study to take care of it. I entered, and looked where I had laid it, and it was not there! With strangely excited nerves and a palpitating heart, I looked into every nook and corner; but the money was not to be found. I called my mother, and asked her if she had been into my study. She had not. I searched again, this time over- hauling every book and paper in and about my desk, and poking into every recee sin the apartment; but with no better result than before. "What could have become of the money? My study was on the lower floor, ia a corner of the build- ing, with one window looking out upon the street, and another looking out into the garden. The sashes were not fastened down, and the curtains were up. Some one in the street or in the garden must have seen me counting the money, and had slipped into the room during my absence, and stolen it. This was not only the conclusion I arrived at, but it was supported by reason and evidence. I put on my hat and overcoat and hurried out; and until night came on I searched up and down the streets for the robber. I cannot tell you what were my feelings as I laid my head upon my pillow that night. I was utterly miserable, and almost wished that I might die if I did not find the Morley. On the following morning I made another unsuc- cessful search in my study, and then, with spirits about as low as human spirits can be, I went to see Messrs. Graves and Hapgood. In a very few words I told them what had happened; and though they tried to cheer me, yet I fanoied that I could detect m their manner a suspicion that it was not all as I represented. The loss waa advertised, and a reward offered for the recovery of the money. I went home, and for three days I was sick. If it had been my own money that I had lost I should have cared not so much; but the fear haunted me that people would think I had used the funds myself, and that fear took away my appetite for food, and kept me awake when I should have been asleep. H On the following Monday, tired and worn, I sought my bed at an early hour, and fell asleep very shortly after I had touched the pillow. I slept more soundly than I had slept before for a week, and as I slept I dreamed. I dreamed that I had gone out and walked with my mother in the garden, and that as I was turn- ing to go up into my own room Mr. Hapgood met me 1 and asked if I could let him have the money I held in my hands belonging to him. I told him I could, and asked him to follow me. I went to my study, moved a chair to the wall, and having got upon it I reached up and opened a small cupboard that had been let in by the side of the chimney, and took the money out from beneath an old boek, and handed it to him. He counted it—found it all right, and went away. I awoke, and heard the Clock strike twelve, and my first impulse, as soon as my senses were fully aroused, was to arise and go to my study; for the dream had been so direct, and so seemingly real, that I was determined to test its significance. I lighted my lamp, and descended to the study. The lower shelves of the narrow cupboard could be reached from the floor; but the upper shelf was so high that I had to get upon a chair to reach it handily. I placed the chair against the wall and stood upon it, and when I held the lamp to the upper shelf I eaw the book-an old account book—just as I had seen it in my dream. I lifted the book, and beneath it I found the package of bank-notes. They were secured by the wafered band, and seemed all right. With a thrill of joy I grasped them, and hurried to my desk, where I counted them. They were all there. It took me some little time to satisfy myself that I was not dreaming still; and I am sure you would laugh if I were to tell you of the ridiculous measures I took to assure myself that I was awake. But I succeeded in deciding the question at length; and then I went back to my bed, and went to sleep with the money under my pillow. In the morning I told my mother of my discovery, and of the wonderful manner in which I had been led to it; and then I asked her if it was not possible that she had accidentally, in clearing up my room, put the money into that cupboard. Her answer was not only a very explioit negative, but she asked me if I did not know that she was not in my room from the tima of my counting the money until I missed it. Of course, my mother could not have done it; and, of course, I was sure that I could not have done it. "V Arv early the next morning I took the money and carried it to Mr. Hapgood; and when I had explained 4b him how I had found it, he joined with me in de- claring that it was very wonderful; and when we had tiscussed the matter in all its bearings we came to the conclusion, or, at least, I came to the conclusion, that the thief, when he found that the loss was advertised, and that the numbers of the bank-notes were given, was afraid to attempt to pass them, and that he had found opportunity to enter my study a second time and place them where I had found them. But how had my dream led me to that cupboard ? I was not willing to accept the old idea that a super- natural agency had been at work for me. I knew there were abnormal states, or spheres, in which the mind of man possesses wonderful powers; but I could not believe that the human mind could reach events entirely separate from all material connections. That is, I believed that human knowledge could not fasten itself upon a fact entirely above and beyond the reaoh of some one of the common senses of human nature. And yet this dream, and its results, seemed for a time to rear an insoluble marvel against my philo- -nnv 1IrVl'a..&J One day, about two weeks after the finding of the money, as I happened to be at the office of the manufacturers, Mr. Hapgood asked me for some particular items of figures which I had rendered in our settlement. I had given him a full statement in detail, which he had lost. I told him that I had made some rough figuring upon a scrap of paper, from which I had perfected the account I had given him; and if that paper could be round, l could draw up another statement of items from it. When I went home I sat down at my desk and searched the drawer and pigeon-holes for the memoranda in question, but could not find it. I rested my brow upon my hand and set my thoughts to work, and at length I re- membered that I had made those figures upon the blank leaf of an old account-book that had been lying upon my desk at the time. But where was the book now ? I pondered again, and presently the clue led me to an opening and unravelling of the whole mystery. I remembered now very clearly that I had set down the items of my sales upon a leaf of that old book, and also that with my pocket-scissors I had cut the strip from one of those leaves with which I had bound the bank-notes. And then I remembered that when my mother called me I took the book from my desk and tossed it upon the upper shelf of the cup. board but at the time my mind was so full of the day-dream of new books and glittering surgical instru- ments, that the act had no place in my thoughts. It was one of those involuntary acts which we are all liable to perform. Having remembered this much, I went to the cupboard and took down the book, and found it to be the very one under which I had found the missing bank-notes. I examined the lower cover of the book, and found adhering to it a bit of wafer. How clear the whole thing was now, and how easily I could call to mind all the circumstances. When I commenced my day-dream, I was holding that book in my hand, and as I became more absorbed, I let it fall upon my desk. It had fallen upon the package of bills, and a section of the damp wafer, which the end of the band did not entirely overlap, had adhered to it; and when I took it up and threw it into the cupboard, the money went with it. Thus you see, after all, my wonderful dream was but the creation of what I please to call an abnormal memory. On that Monday night, when I had become so tired and weary of thought that I could think no more, I went to sleep and forgot my perplexity, and then it was that the inner sense, freed from the burden of fretful conjecture, caught the thread of forgotten facts, and opened the way to a solution of the problem. "The thousand and one dreams that disturb our slumbers with ridiculous fancies are the result of a disordered stomach. The great pneumogastric nerve, connecting the whole digestive apparatus with the brain, is apt to be very insinuating when we have eaten what we ought not to eat. But those dreams which have connection with the affairs of life, and which lead the mind to a discovery of things hidden from the waking senses, are really the results of an effort of the mental faculties to throw off a burden, and when the many misdirected thoughts and cross- purposes of the mind in its normal state are shut out by the closing up of the outer windows, the more active of the inner faculties, both perceptive and reflective, still retaining a hold upon the studies of the day, go at work to some purpose, and things forgotten amid the whirl of a thousand waking fancies are now remembered." "Bat," said I, "how do you account for some of those dreams by which people have been forewarned of events to come." I account for them by the same course of reason- ing," replied the doctor. We are all in the habit of foretelling events. We reason from cause to effect. Sometimes we are wrong, and sometimes we are right. And in case of the dreams of which you speak, probably where one hits the truth, ten thousand fail, but the ten thousand are forgotten, while the one is remembered as a wonderful thing, but in all proba- bility there was nothing wonderful about it. some tokens or signs pointing to the coming event, which had met the observation, but had failed to impress the normal memory, were in that abnormal state, caught up by the faculties that were busy in the dream-work, and thus, while reason slept, intuition perceived^ the sign, and jumped at once to a rational conclusion."

EPITOME OF NEWS. At the Surrey sessions held last week only one person was described as of superior education. The mortality is increasing at Amiens. On Mon- day 46 deaths from cholera were reported. Marshal O'Donnell has arrived at Biarritz. After remaining there some time he intends visiting the theatre of military operations in Germany. The French Academy have selected as the sub. ject for the prize poem of next year The Death of President Lincoln." Eton School will close for the autumn vacation ?ni. the 3rd of August. The holidays will last about seven weeks. The United Service Gazette regrets to learn that the unfortuna.te offioer, Lieutenant St. John Charles Shawe, D Brigace, Royal Horse Artillery, who was so severely wounded by a panther at Chindwarah, in the Central Provinces of India, has since died. The largest, income of a Bostonian is that of Mr. Royal E. RobbinSj treasurer of the American- Watch Company, who is assessed for 377,000 dollars. In New York, the largest income assessment is that of A. T. Stewart, the dry-goods merchant-4,780,000 dollars. > Some sensation was created in the sporting world on Tuesday by Mr. Jacques, of Tooting, under- taking to drive his pony (barely 13 hands high) a dis- tance of 50 miles in four hours, which he accomplished on the Croydon-road in three hours and 40 minutes. The Case of Whipping a Child to Death.- The New York Herald says Mr. Lindsley, the clergy- man at Medina who whipped his child to death be. cause he would not say his prayers, has been released on 10,000 dole, bail, but is afraid to leavetne gaoi. As a Greenwich wherry went off to a Graves- end steamer to receive passengers on Tuesday, in the eagerness of a waterman, named Boxer, to fasten the head of his boat to the gunwale of the steamer, owing to the swell caused by the paddle-whsel he fell over- board and was drowned. Margaret White, in the employ of Mr. E. Sykes, Bromley, was feeding a bark-cutting machine on NIan- day, when a piece of bark became doubled up, and her left arm was caught between the machinery and fear- fully crushed. Har screams brought assistance, and a Burgeon was called in, who amputated the arm at the shoulder-joint. 'The New Queen's Counsel-It is understood that the only gentlemen of the Outer Bar" who will have the honour of "Silk" conferred upon them will be Mr. Charles Pollock and Sir George Honyman, of j the Homs Circuit; Mr. W. A. MundeJl, of the Midland Circuit; and Mr. J..Diekent-orij of the Chancery Bar. > A Fall of Ice.—Messrs. Hutchison and Co., of Kirkcaldy, say in a circular issued on Saturday:- "This week the drought and heat continued until Friday afternoon, when a severe thunderstorm passed over us; a little rain fell, but not sufficient for the grass and crops. In soma parta hail and pieces of ice fell in considerable quantity. Our cereal crops muet e now be very deficient in bulk of straw. Immediate rain would revive grass and turnips." The fall of ice thus referred to has been so serious over several square miles near Kirkcaldy that farmers declare their crops to be more than half destroyed. Marriage in High Life.—On Wednesday morn- ing the Right Hon. the Earl of Sefton, Lord-Lieu- tenant of Lancashire, was married in St. George's, Hanover-square, to the Hon. Miss Jolliffe, only unmar lied daughter of the Right Hon. Lord Hylton. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. J. Cecil Wynter, rector of Gatton, near Reigate, the bride being given away by her father, and the bridegroom's beat man being Colonel F. H. Bathurst, of the Coldstream Guards, late M.P. for South Wilts. The breakfast took place at Lord Hylton's in Stratton-street, and at two o'clock the Earl and Countess of Sefton were to leave for Rook's Nest, Godstone, Surrey. Among those present were the Earl and Countess of Stafford, the Earl and Countess of Derby, Viscount and Vis- countess Enfield, &e. &e. The Public Health.—For the past week the births registered in London and twelve other large towns of the United Kingdom were 3,955; the deaths registered 2,846. The annual rato of mortality was 24 per 1,000 persons living. In London the births of 969 boys and 981 girls, in all 1,950 children, were registered in the week. In the corresponding weeks of ten years, 1856-65, the average number, corrected for increase ot population, was 1,896. The deaths registered in Lon- don during the week were 1,292. It was the 27th week of the year, and the average number of deaths for that week was, with a correction for increase of population, 1,269. The annual rate of mortality in the week was 22 per 1,090 in London, 24 in Edinburgh, and 20 in Dublin, 21 in Bristol, 17 in Birmingham, 38 in Liver- pool, 29 in Manchester, 30 in Salford, 25 in Sheffield, 36 in Leeds. 18 in Hull, 23 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and 25 in Glasgow. The rate in Vienna was 30 per 1,000 during the week. A Young Lady Drowned from a Steamer. —The outward voyage of the steamer Prince, which left Hull for Dunkirk early on Sunday morning, was marred by a very sad occurrence. About eight o'clock in the evening the passengers were startled by a sudden call "hard a-port," and on coming on deck they saw the life-buoy thrown overboard for a young lady, about twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, who had just fallen overboard. Our informant, who writes from Dunkirk, says that the young lady in question belonged to Hull. Daring the passage she had been very sea-sick. Not long before the alarm was raised she had been seen by the captain leaning over the side of the vessel on the bridge. He cautioned her to be careful, lest she should fall overboard. Five or six minutes afterwards she uttered a scream, and it was found that she had fallen into the sea. Efforts were made to save her, but in vain. The reports from the moors of Swaledale and Wensleydale augur ill for the coming grouse sea- son. The brooding hens, the watchers report, have died in great numbers, and the mortality is still con- tinuing at a frightful rate. The accounts from the Westmoreland and Durham moors are nearly as unfa- vourable. The disease which is so fatal in its results is locally termed a distemper; but the cause is supposed, and it is believed accurately, to be due to the severe weather in May last, which cheeked the tender shoots of the heather, upon which the birds so much depend for subsistence at that period of the year, and also for some time subsequently. The railway collision which occurred last week at Huddersfield appears to have been caused by neglect of signals. It seems that the mail train, which ran into the ordinary train, was close behind it at Bradley Station, where the tickets were collected, and shortly afterwards followed it to Huddersfield. When the first train slackened its speed, and had got about fifty yards inside the distance signal, the guard jumped off and went down the line with a lamp, but he had only gone some thirty yards when the mail train came up and ran into the last carriages ot the Leeds train. Two carriages had been added to the train after the guard's van, but it is stated that they had the usual lamps at the end of the last oarriage. The persons who were injured by the collision appear generally to be improving, and out of some four or five and twenty whose names have been ascertained, one of the most seriously injured is Mr. Edward Dawson, of Stable-street, whose collar-bone is broken; and also Miss Ann Proctor, Chapel-street; Miss Emily Moorhouse, Alpha-place, Ratcliffe; Mrs. James Haigh, Lockwood-road; and Miss Jane Firth, Rash- cliffe, who are confined to bed. Fraud by I-Iors ecopers.-Joseph Rowe (stable- man) was charged before the magistrate at Southwark with obtaining the sum of X110 from Lieut.-Colonel Green, C.B., of the 68th Regiment, under false pre- tences. The complainant went to see two horses at the King's Head Stables, High-street, Southwarb-, which were advertised. They were shown him by the prisoner, who said they belonged to his master. After inspecting the animals he paid to Mr. Turner ZCIIO for the horses. Both Turner and the prisoner stated that the horses were perfectly sound in every particular. The next day the complainant took a veterinary sur- geon with him to examine the horses, when he found that they were almost worthless. They were certainly not worth more than X20. They were, however, in pretty good condition, and had been got up well enough to deceive a "flat." Committed for trial. Numerous Deaths by Drowning.—Two boys, named Mills and Lyons, were bathing with some others in the River Aire, at Leeds, when Mills got out of his depth and was sinking. Lyons went to his rescue and was grasped by the drowning child, and both went down and were drowned. Their bodies were got out in a quarter of an hour after the acci- dent, and every means was employed to restora ani- mation. Two young men named Coltash and Craaston, travellers to a firm at Otley, were bathing in the River Wharfe on Sunday, when Mr. Cranston noticed that his friend was sinking. He went to the spot and endeavoured to save him, but he had got considerably beneath the surface, and could not be found. Cranston went on shore and gave an alarm, but two hours elapsed before the body was recovered. On the after- noon of the same day Thomas Rowley, 22 years of age, and Joseph Tong, 18, were bathing and playing in a ballast-hole near the railway at Bentley, when in the course of their struggles they fell suddenly into a deep hole, and, clasping each other, were drowned before assistance could be given. Two Lads D-rowned.-On Friday evening two lads, John Allden and Isaac Giddy, aged respectively 16 and 13, lost their lives under the following circum- stances. The deceased, who were employed at Mr. Andrews's, saw-mills, James-street, Old 'Kent-road, went, after leaving their work, to tho Surrey Cansl, for the purpose of bathing, neither of them being able to swim. After being in the water a short time they to swim. After being in the water a short time they began amusing themselv es by ducking each other, and while doing so one of them got out of his depth, and in attempting to save himself seized the other and drew him after him, and both sank. An alarm was given, but some little delay occurred before any attempt was made, in consequence of a false alarm having been given the previous evening, and the persons in charge of the hatch thinking it was only a repetition of the scandalous conduct. On the deceased being got out. they were conveyed to Mr. Harlinsr'e, the Britannia, Britannia-road, near the hatch. Dr. Anderson, of the Old Kent-road, was sent for, and attended, and every means was resorted to to restore animation, but without sucoess. When the sad intel- ligence was communicated to the mothers of the de- ceased (both widows, olla residing in James-street, and the other in Hatcham-road, Old Kent-road) they were, a? might be expected, almost broken-hearted. Mr. George Hudson and the North-Eastern Bailway Compaoy.—Tae long-pending tsn.it be- tween Mr. George Hudson, formerly M.P. for Sander- land, and_ the North-Eastern Railway Company, has been decided in the Rolls Court ia favour of Mr. Hudson. Mr. Hudson ww the owner of the Whitby estate, which was ve¡ ed in tmatees, but the North- Eastern Railway Company heU a mortgage for < £ 14,000 on it. They discharged the claim of the trustees, and taking the estate into their possession expended considerable euias of money in improving it. In the covenant was a clause that if the mortgage was not paid off • within a certain tim* the company were to be entitled to claim i50,000. In his decision the Master of the Rolls held that the covenant to pay X50,000 on the failara to repay the £ 14,000 was in the nature of a penalty, and could no be enforced, and ordered 436,000 of the claim of the company, with all the interest, to be struck out of their account. He also held that the conveyance from the trustees was a mere release of the property, and did not place the railway company in the place of trustees, but that they still remained as mortgagees, and had no right to ex- pend money in the improvement of the estate. He ordered the expenses of these to be struck out, thus reducing the claim of the oompany against Mr. Hudson by upwards of 450,000. The result, it is said, leaves the company indebted to Mr. Hudson about £ 40,000. The Conversion of Muzzle into Breech Leaders.-The supplementary estimate of the sums required to provide for the estimated excess of the army expenditure for the year ending 31st March, 1867, beyond the ordinary grants for the year 1866-67, for the conversion of muzzle-loading small arms into breech-loaders, has just been issued. The amounts are Vate 12.-Manufacturing Departments: Royal laboratory and small arms establishments, £ 140,000. Vote 13.-Warlike Stores, &c.; Small arms, £ 105,000. Total, 4245,00. The visitors to the South Kensington Museum during the past week was: On Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday, free, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., 9,522; on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (admission 6d.), from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., 1,636; National Portrait Exhi- bition by payment, 1,885-total, 13,043. Average of corresponding week in former years, 10,881. Total from the opening of the museum, 6,163,134.