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The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
·
Andrew Lang
15
Mark
Twain,
who
is
seriously
interested
in
these
subjects,
has
published
an
experience
illustrative
of
such
possibilities.
He
tells
his
tale
at
considerable
length,
but
it
amounts
to
this:--
MARK
TWAIN'S
STORY
Mark
was
smoking
his
cigar
outside
the
door
of
his
house
when
he
saw
a
man,
a
stranger,
approaching
him.
Suddenly
he
ceased
to
be
visible!
Mark,
who
had
long
desired
to
see
a
ghost,
rushed
into
his
house
to
record
the
phenomenon.
There,
seated
on
a
chair
in
the
hall,
was
the
very
man,
who
had
come
on
some
business.
As
Mark's
negro
footman
acts,
when
the
bell
is
rung,
on
the
principle,
"Perhaps
they
won't
persevere,"
his
master
is
wholly
unable
to
account
for
the
disappearance
of
the
visitor,
whom
he
never
saw
passing
him
or
waiting
at
his
door--except
on
the
theory
of
an
unconscious
nap.
Now,
a
disappearance
is
quite
as
mystical
as
an
appearance,
and
much
less
common.
This
theory,
that
apparitions
come
in
an
infinitesimal
moment
of
sleep,
while
a
man
is
conscious
of
his
surroundings
and
believes
himself
to
be
awake
was
the
current
explanation
of
ghosts
in
the
eighteenth
century.
Any
educated
man
who
"saw
a
ghost"
or
"had
a
hallucination"
called
it
a
"dream,"
as
Lord
Brougham
and
Lord
Lyttelton
did.
But,
if
the
death
of
the
person
seen
coincided
with
his
appearance
to
them,
they
illogically
argued
that,
out
of
the
innumerable
multitude
of
dreams,
some
must
coincide,
accidentally,
with
facts.
They
strove
to
forget
that
though
dreams
in
sleep
are
universal
and
countless,
"dreams"
in
waking
hours
are
extremely
rare--
unique,
for
instance,
in
Lord
Brougham's
own
experience.
Therefore,
the
odds
against
chance
coincidence
are
very
great.
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