I have received your note in which you say that you would be glad to have a fuller narrative of my experiences in what I believe to have been a condition of sleeping with open eyes.

The first was when I was twenty years old, one of the crew of an American ship, in the South Atlantic, homeward bound from China. I was at the time but imperfectly recovering from typhoid fever, on such unsuitable diet that it resulted in scurvy before we reached home. The ship was short-handed and the time usually allowed for sleep had been curtailed; “all hands” being kept on deck during the morning and the afternoon watches.

At two o’clock in the morning, it was my turn to keep the lookout on the forecastle. I realized that I was in a state of cruel drowsiness and struggled resolutely to get the better of it. Soon, while standing erect and looking vigilantly ahead, I fell sound asleep and was awakened by falling upon the deck. I then determined not to allow myself to stand still for a moment. The ship was being painted and some spars had been temporarily lashed upon the forecastle so that I could find no place for walking which would allow me to move more than five steps each way, back and forth. In walking this distance, if I staggered sidewise towards the stern, I should fall over the break of the forecastle down upon the main deck, and if I moved more than five steps, there was nothing at one end of my beat but a small life-line at the height of my knee, to prevent me from stepping overboard. Walking to and fro in the situation, I repeatedly struck my forehead and temples with my fists, trying to overcome the inclination to sleep. Nevertheless, I three times went sound asleep between one end of my beat and the other and the third time was saved from being pitched into the sea only by catching the life-line with my hand. I reflected that to continue this walk would be suicide and looked about for some more effective means of keeping myself awake. The expedient I adopted was to sit on a spar at a point where the heavy bolt-rope forming the bottom of the foresail would, as the ship rolled, first strike me from behind; then rake my head, compelling me to bend downward and let it pass, and then strike me in front and force me again to move as it swung backward. Thus I should be sharply struck and compelled to crouch uncomfortably two or three times a minute. So situated, I looked forward upon the sea; imagined that for an instant I had caught sight of a dipping light on the horizon; roused myself to the utmost vigilance in searching for its reappearance, and, while so vigilantly searching, lost consciousness, as I have no doubt, with my eyes wide open. How long I remained in this condition I do not know, but it must have been a number of minutes; possibly half an hour. When consciousness began to return to me, I felt the stroke of the sail upon my head as it swung forward, and, at the same time, knew that I had [360]been seeing, before my mind took hold of the fact, a pair of eyes looking into mine. Then I heard a voice, asking: “What is the matter with you?” It came to me as if part of a dream, but waked me completely and on the instant I knew that the Captain was standing on the windlass and so bending over and turning his body as to look me in the face. I was able to answer promptly and in a quick, natural, decisive way: “There is nothing the matter with me, sir.” “Why don’t you answer when you are hailed?” “I have heard no hail, sir.” “What do you mean? I hailed you from the quarter deck; I hailed you from the waist, and when you did not answer I came to the windlass and hailed you within three feet of your ear. I thought you must be asleep until I saw that your eyes were open.” “I don’t understand it, sir; I certainly did not hear you.” The Captain believed me and turned away, saying: “Keep a sharp lookout,” and I did not fall asleep again until after I had been regularly relieved.

The next experience to which I have referred occurred more than forty years afterwards, when, sitting at a table with several other persons, I was suddenly attacked with sleepiness and could with difficulty keep my attention upon the topic of conversation. I resisted the tendency all I could. I lifted a spoon, turned my eyes towards it with a determination that they would not close, gave my head a shake, and, the next moment was asleep and dreaming. I do not think I remained so more than a few seconds. When I awoke, my eyes were still fixed on the spoon which I was turning in my fingers; I could not define my dream, but had an imperfect recollection of it. I was sure that I had been dreaming and that my dream had carried me through much more time than had actually passed. I said to myself:—“My eyes cannot have been closed.” No one at the table had observed me and I entered again into the conversation that was advancing, having no more trouble to keep awake.

My third experience occurred last year. I was in a common car upon a railroad, occupying the right hand place upon a double seat; this bringing me next {to} the aisle. A gentleman traveling with me, who had both our passage tickets, was seated on my left. Here again I fell asleep, as I am convinced, with my eyes open, and with no consciousness at any time that I was “going off.” I saw a conductor coming through the car. When he came near me, he turned to collect the tickets from the occupants of the opposite seats and then swung half around and touched me on the right shoulder. I lifted my right hand and moved it as a gesture toward my companion who had the tickets. With the movement, I recovered full waking consciousness. The instant before I did so, and the instant after I did so, my hand, passing to the left, was seen by me in a continuous motion. Also, when awake, I saw the people on the seats before me just as I had been seeing them in my dream. But now the conductor was no longer at my side or in the car, and I realized instantly that he had existed only in my dream. I asked myself at once if I could entertain a doubt that my eyes had been open through this dream, and I could not. It seemed to me that while I was asleep, my eyes had not ceased to see, but that there had been a disconnection, or a partial disconnection, between them and my mind. I say partial, [361]because I had once, when under the influence of morphine, administered by a surgeon, experienced what is called “double consciousness” very vividly and curiously and I thought that I was aware that there had been a slight degree of double consciousness in this case, and that I had it in memory that my eyes had not been obscured; that there had been no interruption of actual vision. I had not looked squarely and attentively at the conductor, but as he moved slowly toward me in the aisle, turning from one passenger to another, I had obtained a clear impression of his personal appearance. He was under-sized, his face dull and hard, his hair and beard untidy, his coat was unbuttoned and shabby, and I had been led to the thought while I was asleep, that on the Pennsylvania Company’s roads, no conductor would ever be seen so slouchy and ill-favored. Had I been a little less conscious of the change from a partially dreaming to a fully awake condition, I should probably have explained the experience as a hallucination in which the ghost of a railroad conductor appeared, touched me and vanished, while all other things within my vision remained as they were, fixed and tangible.

Having written what is above, another circumstance has been brought to my mind, which, as it may be instructive as to the possible origin, growth and ripening of what might be taken for household words, and being regardful of your wish for accounts of personal experience of this nature, I will also narrate:

Forty-three years ago, I became possessed of a farm on the seacoast near New York. Shortly afterwards, I heard an old man, native of the neighborhood, refer to the farm as the “Tosomock Place.” Upon inquiry, he said that had been the name of the locality when he was a boy. I said that it sounded like an Indian name and he observed that there were shell heaps on the shore and that he supposed the name came from the Indians. Thereafter I called the farm Tosomock Farm and was accustomed to say, when asked, that it was the Indian name of the locality. Years afterwards I ascertained that, in the previous century, the farm had once been the home of a family, of which no descendant was now living in the county. The name of the family was Teschemaker.

Upon this farm there had been, until within a few years of my time, a house described to me as “a real old Dutch farm-house”; long and low, of one story fully above ground covered with a peaked and curved roof. Its main floor was on the level of the ground at one end and, as the surface sloped away, seven feet above it at the other, where a level entrance was given to the cellar. My predecessor had removed the roof, added a story; given it a commonplace roof, and built a veranda on three sides of the house. The old walls, having been formed principally of large boulders collected on the farm, were very thick and the openings for windows in them, short and narrow.

Soon after I came to live in this house, a guest remarking the quaintness of the room in which we were dining and the fortress-like windows, said: “A house like this ought to have a ghost.” Recalling a statement of the old man’s, that he had heard that a gang of tories had occupied the house during the Revolution, I answered my friend: “Yes, it has a ghost; I bought it with the [362]live stock.” “What’s the story?” he asked. “The story is,” I replied, “that during the Revolution the house was occupied by a company of Tory Cow Boys. Once, at night, during a fearful easterly storm, an alarm was given, throwing them into a panic and they fled to get under cover of the British frigates at the Narrows. There is a place below divided from the rest of the cellar by bars or narrow plank slat work, in which cider used to be kept under lock. This had been taken by the Tory garrison for a dungeon and in it, the day before the storm set in, the drummer of the corps had been confined for drunkenness. In the flight he was forgotten and left to starve to death. Ever since, when an easterly gale is rising, and the sea begins to roar on the beach, he is to be heard groaning and sighing; trying to wrench or force apart the bars of his cage, or playing the Devil’s tattoo on an empty cider barrel.”

This yarn, invented on the moment, and recited with suitable gravity, was heard by the maid waiting upon us and so passed out. Some years afterwards, when we had other domestic service, it came back to us as a veritable legend of the house. Then it became a custom with us, when an easterly storm arose, to imagine that we heard the drummer, and there were noises made by the wind swaying the timber framework of the new parts of the house and passing through the trees near it and the trelliswork under the veranda, which it was easy to think resembled those of subdued drumming, with sighs and groans, and convulsive wrenching, straining and creaking of wooden bars. There were those in the kitchen part of the house who were sure that these resemblances were more than imaginary. They were confirmed in this conviction when, at length, in making repairs of the premises, there was found an oval brass plate having an inscription showing that it had been a British military belt-plate.

I was about to write, in all honesty, that this plate was found imbedded in the earthen floor of the cider cellar and that the inscription upon it read: “THE QUEEN’S LOYAL RANGERS,” but a doubt came to me as to the word Rangers. I reflected that I had not seen the plate since, some thirty years ago, our furniture had been lost in a fire, and that, when in Texas, I had become familiar with the word as applied to irregular troops. So, questioning if memory were not playing tricks with me as to this word, I consulted my wife, who said: “The plate was not found in the cider cellar; it was found in removing the floor of the cock-loft over the old carriage-house, and the inscription on it was, “The King’s Loyal Dragoons.” I give up the Rangers, but think that I am right as to the Queen, else, why, King being the more probable word, should I have thought of Queen?

But so, even in one lifetime, a piece of the simplest, innocent, playful imagination has acquired something of domestic, traditional and legendary character; its authenticity confirmed by an accidental discovery, and particulars of that discovery become misty, and evidence respecting it hopelessly conflicting.

Upon this matter of conflicting testimony, I may add this experience:

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Ten years after the War of the Rebellion, I was dining with a Virginia farmer and his family. There were at the table, also, his brother and another man, both of whom lived near by. The farmer had mentioned that, during the War, he had lost all his fences. I observed that he must have suffered from both sides, as the region had been occupied several times alternately, one army driving out the other. “No,” he said, “the Confederates were never here.” I thought that I knew the contrary, but his brother repeated the statement. I stated my grounds for having supposed that the Confederates had been much on the ground and the farmer replied that I had been misinformed, no Confederates had been near the place in all the War. He looked around the table and, apparently, all present but myself confirmed the statement. Courtesy forbade me to say anything further. Here, then, was positive evidence, taken on the spot, ten years after a highly important historical occurrence, by a number of persons, all of whom must have been eye witnesses, much interested and personally affected by the circumstance in question. In conversation, afterwards, with the third man of the region, something he said led me to ask, “Surely you remember then, do you not, that the Confederate army was in this region?” “Certainly, Sir,” he replied, “again and again; they were all through here. Reckon they were camped on that man’s farm.” “What did he and all of them mean, then, when they said they were never here?” “Reckon they were forgetful, Sir.” “But why did you not say so, when we were at the dinner table?” “Why, they were all so positive I did not think it would do any good, and I did not care to have a difference with them.”

Yours Very Truly