Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Assault and Dream


A gentlewoman present added an account equally surprising which she received from
the person's own mouth:

"Mrs. B--, when about fourteen years of age, being at
a boarding school a mile or two from her father's, dreamed she was on the top of the church steeple, when a man came up and threw her down to the roof of the church. Yet she seemed not much hurt, till he came to her again and threw her to the bottom. She thought she looked hard at him, and said, 'Now you have hurt me sadly, but I shall hurt you worse'; and waked. A week after, she was to go to her father's. She set out early in the morning. At the entrance of a little wood, she stopped and doubted whether she should not go round, instead of through it. But, knowing no reason, she went straight through till she came to the other side. Just as she was going over the style, a man pulled her back by the hair. She immediately knew it was the same man whom she had seen in her dream. She fell on her knees, and begged him, 'For God's sake, do not hurt me any more.' He put his hands round her neck and squeezed her so that she instantly lost her senses. He then stripped her, carried her a little way, and threw her into a ditch. 

The Journal of John Wesley

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