Charles W. Chesnutt

“ Rena's few years of schooling at Patesville
and her months at Charleston had scarcely disturbed
these hoary superstitions which lurk in the
dim corners of the brain. No lady in Clarence,
perhaps, would have remained undisturbed by a vivid
dream, three times repeated, of some event bearing
materially upon her own life.
The first repetition of a dream was decisive of
nothing, for two dreams meant no more than one.
The power of the second lay in the suspense, the
uncertainty, to which it gave rise. ”

“ It was not
strange that Rena, thus isolated, should have been
prostrated by homesickness for several weeks
after leaving Patesville. When the paroxysm
had passed, there followed a dull pain, which
gradually subsided into a resignation as profound, in
its way, as had been her longing for home. She
loved, she suffered, with a quiet intensity of which
her outward demeanor gave no adequate expression.
From some ancestral source she had derived
a strain of the passive fatalism by which alone
one can submit uncomplainingly to the inevitable. ”

“ The night after Warwick and Tryon had ridden
away, Rena dreamed again that her mother
was ill. Better taught people than she, in regions
more enlightened than the South Carolina of that
epoch, are disturbed at times by dreams. Mis'
Molly had a profound faith in them. If God, in
ancient times, had spoken to men in visions of the
night, what easier way could there be for Him to
convey his meaning to people of all ages? Science,
which has shattered many an idol and destroyed
many a delusion, has made but slight inroads
upon the shadowy realm of dreams. ”