You continued to move onwards.  “Impossible!  Impossible!” I cried; “It cannot be done.  O, pray, come away.”

Then you knelt upon the footboard, and said,—­“You are right.  It cannot be done in that way; but we can save the train.  Help me to get these irons asunder.”

The engine was connected with the train by two great iron hooks and staples.  By a tremendous effort, in making which I almost lost my balance, we unhooked the irons and detached the train; when, with a mighty leap as of some mad supernatural monster, the engine sped on its way alone, shooting back as it went a great flaming trail of sparks, and was lost in the darkness.  We stood together on the footboard, watching in silence the gradual slackening of the speed.  When at length the train had come to a standstill, we cried to the passengers, “Saved!  Saved!” and then amid the confusion of opening the doors and descending and eager talking, my dream ended, leaving me shattered and palpitating with the horror of it.

—­London, Nov. 1876.

II.  The Wonderful Spectacles*

I was walking alone on the seashore.  The day was singularly clear and sunny.  Inland lay the most beautiful landscape ever seen; and far off were ranges of tall hills, the highest peaks of which were white with glittering snows.  Along the sands by the sea came towards me a man accoutred as a postman.  He gave me a letter.  It was from you.  It ran thus:—­

“I have got hold of the earliest and most precious book extant.  It was written before the world began.  The text is easy enough to read; but the notes, which are very copious and numerous, are in such minute and obscure characters that I cannot make them out.  I want you to get for me the spectacles which Swedenborg used to wear; not the smaller pair—­those he gave to Hans Christian Andersen—­but the large pair, and these seem to have got mislaid.  I think they are Spinoza’s make.  You know he was an optical-glass maker by profession, and the best we have ever had.  See if you can get them for me.”

When I looked up after reading this letter, I saw the postman hastening away across the sands, and I cried out to him, “Stop! how am I to send the answer?  Will you not wait for it?”

He looked round, stopped, and came back to me.

“I have the answer here,” he said, tapping his letter-bag, “and I shall deliver it immediately.”

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* From another letter to the friend mentioned in the note appended 
to the “Doomed Train.”—­(Author’s Note.)
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“How can you have the answer before I have written it?” I asked.  “You are making a mistake.”

“No,” he said.”  In the city from which I come, the replies are all written at the office, and sent out with the letters themselves.  Your reply is in my bag.”

“Let me see it,” I said.  He took another letter from his wallet and gave it to me.  I opened it, and read, in my own handwriting, this answer, addressed to you:—­