I was visited last night by a dream of so strange and vivid a kind
that I feel impelled to communicate it to you, not only to relieve
my own mind of the impression which the recollection of it causes me,
but also to give you an opportunity of finding the meaning, which
I am sill far too much shaken and terrified to seek for myself.

It seemed to me that you and I were two of a vast company of men
and women, upon all of whom, with the exception of myself--for I
was there voluntarily--sentence of death had been passed. I was
sensible of the knowledge--how obtained I know not--that this terrible
doom had been pronounced by the official agents of some new reign
of terror. Certain I was that none of the party had really been
guilty of any crime deserving of death; but that the penalty had
been incurred through

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* This narrative was addressed to the friend particularly referred
to in it. The dream occurred near the close of 1876, and on the
eve, therefore, of the Russo-Turkish war, and was regarded by us
both as having relation to a national crisis, of a moral and spiritual
character, our interest in which was so profound as to be destined
to dominate all our subsequent lives and work. (Author's Note.)
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their connection with some regime, political, social or religious,
which was doomed to utter destruction. It became known among us
that the sentence was about to be carried out on a colossal scale;
but we remained in absolute ignorance as to the place and method