Of Hone's affair there are two versions. Both may be given, as they
are short. If they illustrate the deja vu, they also illustrate the
fond discrepancies of all such narratives. {24}
THE KNOT IN THE SHUTTER
"It is said that a dream produced a powerful effect on Hone's mind.
He dreamt that he was introduced into a room where he was an entire
stranger, and saw himself seated at a table, and on going towards the
window his attention was somehow or other attracted to the window-
shutter, and particularly to a knot in the wood, which was of singular
appearance; and on waking the whole scene, and especially the knot in
the shutter, left a most vivid impression on his mind. Some time
afterwards, on going, I think, into the country, he was at some house
shown into a chamber where he had never been before, and which
instantly struck him as being the identical chamber of his dream. He
turned directly to the window, where the same knot in the shutter
caught his eye. This incident, to his investigating spirit, induced a
train of reflection which overthrew his cherished theories of
materialism, and resulted in conviction that there were spiritual
agencies as susceptible of proof as any facts of physical science; and
this appears to have been one of the links in that mysterious chain of
events by which, according to the inscrutable purposes of the Divine
will, man is sometimes compelled to bow to an unseen and divine power,
and ultimately to believe and live.
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