“The following anecdote has been preserved in a family of rank in Scotland, the descendants of a distinguished lawyer of the last age. This eminent person had been consulted respecting a case of great importance and much difficulty, and he had been studying it with intense anxiety and attention. After several days had been occupied in this manner, he was observed by his wife to rise from his bed in the night and go to a writing-desk which stood in the bed-room. He then sat down and wrote a long letter, which he put carefully by in the desk and returned to bed. The following morning he told his wife that he had had a most interesting dream; that he had dreamt of delivering a clear and luminous opinion respecting a case which had exceedingly perplexed him, and that he would give anything to recover the train of thought which had passed before him in his dream. She then directed him to the writing-desk, where he found the opinion clearly and fully written out, and which was afterwards found to be perfectly correct.” It is probable that this gentleman was actually awake when he arose from the bed and wrote the paper referred to, and that in the morning he mistook the circumstance for a dream. It is not at all uncommon for such errors to be committed, especially under the condition of mental anxiety and fatigue. A gentleman informed me only a short time since that going to bed after a very exciting day he thought the next morning that he had dreamed of a fire occurring in the vicinity of his house. To his surprise his wife informed him that the supposed dream was a reality, and that he had got up to the window, looked at the fire, conversed with her concerning it, and that he was at the time fully awake. Brierre de Boismont[40] relates the following instance, which is to the same effect: “In a convent in Auvergne, an apothecary was sleeping with several persons; being attacked with nightmare, he charged his companions with throwing themselves on him and attempting to strangle him. They all denied the assertion, telling him that he had passed the night without sleeping, and in a state of high excitement. In order to convince him of this fact, they prevailed on him to sleep alone in a room carefully closed, having previously given him a good supper, and even made him partake of food of a flatulent nature. The paroxysm returned; but, on this occasion, he swore that it was the work of a demon, whose face and figure he perfectly described.”