ld have been got at? For I never
told the date, until I wrote it.' Now, _my_ story had NO DATE; but
seeing, when I looked over the proof, the great importance of having _a_
date, I (C. D.) wrote in, unconsciously, the exact date on the margin of
the proof!" The reader will remember the Doncaster race story; and to
other like illustrations of the subject already given, may be added this
dream. "Here is a curious case at first-hand" (30th of May 1863). "On
Thursday night in last week, being at the office here, I dreamed that I
saw a lady in a red shawl with her back towards me (whom I supposed to
be E.). On her turning round I found that I didn't know her, and she
said 'I am Miss Napier.' All the time I was dressing next morning, I
thought--What a preposterous thing to have so very distinct a dream
about nothing! and why Miss Napier? for I never heard of any Miss
Napier. That same Friday night, I read. After the reading, came into my
retiring-room, Mary Boyle and her brother, and _the_ Lady in the red
shawl whom they present as 'Miss Napier!' These are all the
circumstances, exactly told."

Another kind of dream has had previous record, with no superstition to
build itself upon but the loving devotion to one tender memory. With
longer or shorter intervals this was with him all his days. Never from
his waking thoughts was the recollection altogether absent; and though
the dream would leave him for a time, it unfailingly came back. It was
the feeling of his life that always had a mastery over him. What he said
on the sixth anniversary of the death of his sister-in-law, that friend
of his youth whom he had made his ideal of all moral excellence, he
might have said as truly after twenty-six years more. In the very year
before he died, the influence was potently upon him. "She is so much in
my thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful, and have
greatly prospered in anything, that the recollection of her is an
essential part of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as
the beating of my heart is." Through later troubled years, whatever was
worthiest in him found in this an ark of safety; and it was the nobler
part of his being which had thus become also the essential. It gave to
success what success by itself had no power to give; and nothing could
consist with it, for any length of time, that was not of good report and
pure. What more could I say that was not better said from the pulpit of
the Abbey whe