The Argosy — page 266: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Shapes that Dreams may take. 249 The murderer, Bellingham, in his confession, owned that the murder had been fully conceived in his own mind for fully a fort- _ night before the deed was committed. Is it possible that some ‘‘ rapport” was established between Bel- _ lingham and Mr. Williams, by the presence of Michael Williams in | London—and that the dream was a kind of “ thought transference ?” | We will now adduce an instance where a dream was connected _ with the saving of a life. A lady, whose full name and address were given with the original _yersion of the story, had a young servant who was deaf and dumb. The girl fell into ill-health and it was thought desirable that she _ should have a change, but she was most reluctant to leave her mis- tress. One Tuesday morning, after taking a breakfast tray to a bed- | room, she was seen no more. ‘The household was in great distress /and alarm. The neighbouring woods were searched, and a reach _of the canal was let off. Nothing was heard of her all Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday morning, the superintendent of police, ) who had, of course, had full information of the disappearance, called atthe house, and saying that he had received an impression that the , girl was hidden somewhere on the premises, requested to make a minute search. He had never been in the house before, but went _ straight down to a certain cellar, and there to an open flue, wherein they found the girl jammed fast. The opening from the flue to the | cellar was not above eighteen inches high, and how the girl had forced herself up it remained mysterious. They had to get bricklayers’ tools and dig down the bricks before they could get her out. |. Mr. Wedgwood (one of the family of the famous potter) made ‘\particular inquiries into this case. Two or three years having = = —_- | remembered the case quite well. He said his father had roused his } mother, in the middle of the night, saying that he knew now where | that poor girl was hidden—up a chimney in the cellar of her mis- | tress’s own house. His father had not gone to rest again, but had _) Started on his quest soon after daybreak. | A question to be asked here is, could the superintendent have _ teceived any description of the premises from any of his subordinates, | -—~and had his mind dwelt for a moment on the cellar and the flue : | as a possible hiding-place? In this case, the picture might easily be _ renewed in a dream. | In 1876, a Captain Smalley, of West Droxbury, Massachusetts, | U,S.A., received a handsome testimonial from the British Govern- -;ment as a recognition of his humanity in rescuing the crew of an | Irish vessel in the previous winter. Captain Smalley’s own story, as ,telated at the time in American papers, was that on a certain _) November night, when six hundred miles out at sea, he awoke suddenly, strongly impressed by a dream, in which he had seen a _)number of men in imminent peril, whom he vainly attempted to VOL, XLVII, Q* COMIC OOO ‘S (CO) im