tion, and more or less colour the whole of my life. No person can have
had three or four premonitions such as those which I have described
without feeling that such premonitions are the only certainties of the
future. They will be fulfilled, no matter how incredible they may
appear; and amid the endless shifting circumstances of our life, these
fixed points, towards which we are inevitably tending, help to give
steadiness to a career, and a feeling of security to which the majority
of men are strangers.[8] Premonitions are distinct from dreams, although
many times they are communicated in sleep. Whether in the sleeping or
waking stage there are times when mortal men gain, as it were, chance
glimpses behind the veil which conceals the future. Sometimes this
premonition takes the shape of a deep indwelling consciousness, based
not on reason or on observation, that for us awaits some great work to
be done, which we know but dimly, but which is, nevertheless, the one
reality of life.

[8] One of the premonitions referred to by my Father was
fulfilled on that fatal night in April, 1912, when the Titanic
struck an iceberg and sunk with 1,600 souls, and his life on
this plane ended.

He had known for years and stated the fact to many that he would
not die in his bed and that his "passing" would be sudden and
dramatic--that he would, as he put it, "die in his boots."

As to the actual cause or place of his "passing" he had no
premonition--but rather inclined to the idea that he would be
kicked to death in the streets by an angry mob whilst defending
some unpopular cause. E. W. Stead.

Chapter II.

Warnings Given in Dreams.

In my case each of my premonitions related to an important crisis in my
life, but often premonitions are of a very different nature. One which
was told me when I was in Glasgow came in a dream, but it is so peculiar
that it is worthy of mention in this connection. The Rev. William Ross,
minister of the Church of Cowcaddens, in Glasgow, is a Highlander. On
the Sunday evening after I had addressed his congregation, the
conversation turned on premonitions and second sight, and he told me the
following extraordinary dream:--When he was a lad, living in the
Highlands, at a time when he had never seen a game of football, or knew
anything about it, he awoke in the morning with a sharp pain in his
ankle. This pa