found by experience that this had a tendency to perpetuate a particular dream. For twenty-five years I was visited at irregular intervals by a dream of the death, by drownings, of my brother who is still living. It frequently recurred soon after I had told it with elaborateness of detail to another. The number of appalling dreams that come to nothing is very great, where the vividness of details sometimes fairly compels belief. In many instances a dream of one's death originates in a profound derangement of the nervous system, and the effect of such a dream upon that weakened condition may be fatal. The young student to whom reference has been made came of a family peculiarly liable to instant death from heart-disease. Since that period his only brother died without warning, when quietly, as it was supposed, reposing upon his bed, and since the death of the brother, their mother has died in a similar manner. The dream was so vivid that the young man believed it, and prepared himself for it in mind while his body was depressed by the natural physical effect. Had he been treated as was another young man who had a similar dream, and believed it as implicitly, he might have lived. In that case a sagacious physician, finding evidences that death was near, and believing the symptoms to be caused wholly by the impression that he was to die, administered a heavy dose of chloroform. When the young man became conscious and found the hour fixed upon for his death long past, he speedily recovered.
The repetition of dreams on the same night or on other nights is explained by the impression which they make; and doubtless the number 3 has literary and religious associations which have an effect upon some dreamers. If they have a notion that 3 is the number for significant dreams, when they have dreamed
