Sleepwalking

Keaders of that channing work of my late friend Wilkie Collins, "The Moonstone, " will remember the sleepwalking f eats of Mr. Franklin Blake when under the influence of an opiate. What the novelist describes as a piece of fiction may be paralleled from the sober records of science. McNish, in his classic volume on "Sleep, " tells us of a shepherd lad who, wrapt in sluniber, walked miles to the place where his flock was pastured, waded through a river and returned home without waking. In another case a lad in his sleep scaled a precipitous cliff and brought home from it an eagle's nest, which waafonnd under his bed in the morning. Abercrombie's case of the Scottásh lawyer who, when worried over a perplexing case, was seen bv his wife to rise from his bed in the night is another illnstration of the occasionally purposive character of somnambulisrn, when, directed by its private secretaries, the sleeping ego is apparently ronsed from its couch and made to act the part of a pure automaton. This individual went to a writing desk which stood in his bedroom, sat down before the desk and wrote for some time. Then, replacing the paper within the desk, he retrorned to bed. In the morning he told his wife of a dream he had experienced, in which he imagined he had given a satisfactory opinión on the case which was troubling his mind. He expressed regret that he cotüd not recall the train of thought represented in his dream. On his wife directing him to his writing desk, he found therein the opinión in question clearly written out and in