This article has been transcribed from a copy of the Cardiff Times in the online collection of scanned Welsh newspapers 1804-1919 in the National Library of Wales, with grateful recognition of the free access accorded to all readers. Paragraph breaks have been introduced for easier reading.
This article presents no problems for today’s reader. Like many others, it takes the form of an informal address to the writer’s editor, whom Samuel regularly asks for better pay. It starts with a glance at Hamlet’s famous line ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in our philosophy’ (Hamlet I.v.168-9), and refers to the sensation novelist, Wilkie Collins. The gentleman in the second illustration has sung ‘Yes, let me like a soldier fall’, from the opera Maritana (1845) by William Vincent Wallace, with libretto by Edward Fitzball:
‘Yes! let me like a soldier fall,
Upon some open plain,
This breast expanding for the bal
To blot out ev'ry stain.’
He receives his just reward.
— David Skilton
The lady who firmly believes in dreams and omens.
URELY there is more in this world than is comprehended in our philosophy,[i] my good sir. There is more in this world than meets the eye. I have often noticed this, sir, in the case of remarkable dreams and coincidences, records of which are frequently, under a big heading, to be found in the ever-veracious newspapers of this decade. I know that all these are true, because I have invented and written a considerable number of them myself at so much a coincidence. The lady whose husband is on a journey and who dreams that she sees the said husband fall down with a ghastly face at exactly 1 a.m., and afterwards wakes to find that her husband did at that hour exactly, fall down from an exuberance of (Scotch) spirits, is familiar to all of us, and a very touching story that is – when she gets him home. In these cases the philosophical inquirer and the psychological student would do well to inquire what the lady had for supper; suppers, dreams, and coincidences often have a strong bearing on each other; at any rate, the supper, if it be big enough, has a strong bearing on the stomach, and the stomach bears on the dream of coincidence. This fact may not seem instantly apparent to everyone; it wants a bit of thinking out, but once mastered it is a fact worth knowing. If you haven’t leisure to think it out at home, go to the seaside for a month and try there. Then there is another singular coincidence often met with in the newspapers, which, strange to say, is never headed in good big type as ‘sich.’ I refer to the absconding bank-cashier coincidence. By a remarkable coincidence that cashier usually turns up somewhere in Spain, and yet the reports never comment upon the wonder thereof.
Singular coincidence that this gentleman should tumble head over heels shortly after singing ‘Let me like a soldier fall.’
I myself personally have often been concerned in remarkable coincidences. Not long ago I sent round to a friend for the temporary loan of a ten-pound note, but by the most singular coincidence he had that very morning lent out to another friend all the “ten- ners" he had — at least he said so, and I don't think that he is a bigger romancer than most coincidence inventors. It is funny how these things occur. At the very moment that my butcher called at my domicile for the Iast half-year's bill, I was waiting to pay him at his own shop, at least my servant “gal" told him that I'd gone there for that purpose, and I really have always found her a truthful girl, though she does keep company with a militiaman.
Strange thing that this lady and my friend Spooner should meet (quite by accident) at the same place every evening.
I myself personally have often been concerned in remarkable coincidences. Not long ago I sent round to a friend for the temporary loan of a ten-pound note, but by the most singular coincidence he had that very morning lent out to another friend all the “ten- ners" he had — at least he said so, and I don't think that he is a bigger romancer than most coincidence inventors. It is funny how these things occur. At the very moment that my butcher called at my domicile for the Iast half-year's bill, I was waiting to pay him at his own shop, at least my servant “gal" told him that I'd gone there for that purpose, and I really have always found her a truthful girl, though she does keep company with a militiaman.
It is the small country newspapers, my editorial Napoleon, which deal chiefly in coincidences. They are fond of inserting in their columns, side by side with the reports of transactions in the bullock markets and sheep wash advertisements, such letters as the following:--
REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE
(To the Editor of the Bullockford Bulletin.)
Sir,— I have frequently seen set forth in the columns of your valuable and widely read publication the record of certain singular coincidences. Let me add to these latter the following: -- Last Sunday, at 11 o'clock a. m. exactly, my wife was engaged in making a batter pudding, and placed the batter in the pan upon the kitchen fender for a moment. Having her attention distracted elsewhere at the time, my youngest, child seized the opportunity to sit down in the batter. Strange to say, almost precisely the same thing occurred, and at the same time within an hour or two, at the house of my wife's sister, who resides some ten miles off, there being this difference, that the child in the latter case poured the batter over the household or domestic cat, which was reposing on the hearthrug. Let the singularity of this circumstance be my apology for trespassing on your valuable space. –
I am, yours, etc.. A. MUGG.
A 1, Juggins-street.
Then the week following, sir, someone writes to supplement the important communication of Mr Mugg, and to state that whilst he some time ago in Australia was chewing tobacco, his brother here in Bullockford was almost at the same hour of the same day in the same year doing exactly the same thing.
The sort of person one dreams about after supping on devilled kidneys.
As for dreams, sir, I must confess that they are quite beyond my philosophy. I have seldom known them come true, and in my case I'm rather glad, as a general rule, that they haven't. On the one hand, sir, I have many a time dreamt that I was the owner of vast riches and baronial halls, and I have also dreamt that St. Peter accepted me with open arms at the gates of Paradise, but on the other side of the ledger, sir, I find that I have lost innumerable limbs, bad daggers stuck in all over me, fallen down precipices, been hanged, drawn, and quartered, encountered. dragons and endured all manner of hardships — in dreams. I'm glad that dreams don't often come true. I have known dreams come true once or twice. I know a man who was going to engage in a prize fight, and who dreamt that he received a black eye -- he did afterwards — two of 'em, in fact. I have several times on the eve of a marine voyage dreamt that I was going to be sea- sick, and i' faith, I have been, and ‘no error.’ Wilkie Collins, who follows in the steps of many eminent psychologists, maintains that all dreams can be traced back to their source, and that, fac[t] by fact, the counterpart in actual wakefulness of each portion of a dream can be traced. I daresay he was right. I know a man who dreamt that he was a brewery, with all the brewing plant in full working order. He tried the Collins plan, and endeavoured to trace back the origin of that dream. He wasn't long in doing it – he had called on several brewers the previous day, and had had a tasting order. I have known the plan fail, though. Not long since I dreamt I was a millionaire, and I tried to ascertain what event of the day before could suggest such an hallucination. The only incident bearing upon the dream that I could in any way remember was the fact that I had been ‘subbed’ half a crown by you, sir, the day before.
Is this sleep walking or is it a search for burglars?.
Sometimes the strong truth of dreams comes home to us in a most forcible manner. Only lately I dreamt that I had fallen out of bed. Well, I had, and I've got the phrenological bump to show even now if you doubt my word. Once when I was a boy I dreamt I was swimming all alone in a vast ocean with the surging waters on all sides threatening to overwhelm me. I awoke to find that my irate male parent bad poured a can of water over me in order to induce me, after I had been pummelled, pinched, and had pins run into me, to wake up and go to school. He called it administering the water care.
I suppose, sir, that you will have seen what are called ‘Dream Books’ – manuals chiefly purchased by sentimental servant girls, which give you directions that, if followed, will enable you to dream about any specific thing. Thus you can dream that you are a lord duke or a belted earl, or that you have just come into an inheritance of ten thousand a year. You could put a bit of bride cake under your pillow if you were a girl, and you would dream that you were married to the object of your choice. If you be a man, I should say (though I don't know that this specific is given in the books) that the best way to dream that you were married would be to put beneath your pillow a lot of unpaid bills and a buttonless shirt. The book does not give pork chops as a specific for procuring dreamfulness, if I may be permitted to use such a word, but they are invaluable. I'll warrant me that you'll dream about something or other if you only take a dose of pork chops; depend upon it you'll either be falling down fathomless abysses (a most pleasing sensation) all night, or you'll be hobnobbing with the Prince of Wales and smoking his best cigars. But beware about dreaming of smoking. I know a man – an actor, a friend of mine – who dreamt that he was smoking, and woke to find that he was not only smoking, but blazing as well. He had been smoking before he went to sleep; he did the blazing afterwards. Singular to say, I've just arrived at the conclusion that I'd better shut up for the night, and by a singular coincidence your foreman printer cherishes the same idea. Well, I'll not quarrel with fate; here's pleasant dreams to you
Last modified 11 February 2022