A Human Nightmare

"Havo you ever had a nightmare in wbich some fearful danger threatened you and you couldn't move or get out of the wayï" asked Hermann Solomon of a crowd of peripatejie story tellers at the Richelieu hotel. "Several years ago I had several of the nocturnal visitors every night f or a week and grew very weary of them, for in spite oL my determination not to let them bully me out of my equanimity I would nearly expire every night and a wake with cold perspiration breaking out all over me. Toward the last of that interesting week I stopped with a landlord in northern Arkansas and resolved as I went to sleep that come what would I would positively reí use to give in ín the least to my imagination. "Some time past midnight the usual scare came. Tuis time it was a tall and angular woman in white, with a long butcherknife. Mentally, I was congratulating myself that at last I was learning to overeóme the foolish fears of nightmares and wondering how it would pass off. I saw the demoniac grin as she flourished the knife in front of my face almost without a tremor, and when she laughed a wild, unearthly laugh I gave a start and found it all real and that I was actually awake. "Scared? That word can't express it. I dropped on the other side of the bed as 6he made a slash at me, and as she ran around the bed I era wied under, reached the door and went down the steps about three at a time ahead of her. By the time we reached 'the big road' I think I had gained several feet, as she had more clothing to interfere with her progresa than I had just then. I had imagined that a man really scared couldn't move. Well, I will give any odds desired on the proposition that I moved down that road, and I don't think I would need any corroborative testimony to convince any one who saw me that I was scared. "About a mile down the road I ran into the arms of her husband and sons. who were out looking for her. She was a In ;le 'outen her head' at times, they said, and she had evidently entered the open door at my landlord's and reached my room without any one knowing it. As her relatives took her home I sadly retraced my steps and found the whole family aroused. The ekplanation was satisfactory, and the adventure cured me of nightmares. -