In other cases, the event is one
which is of no apparent importance, or is not in any way connected
with the man to whom the vision comes. Sometimes it is clear that the
intention of the Ego (or the communicating entity, whatever it may be)
is to warn the lower self of the approach of some calamity, either in
order that it may be prevented or, if that be not possible, that the
shock may be minimized by preparation.

The event most frequently thus foreshadowed is, perhaps not
unnaturally, death--sometimes the death of the seer himself, sometimes
that of one dear to him. This type of prevision is so common in the
literature of the subject, and its object is so obvious, that we need
hardly cite examples of it; but one or two instances in which the
prophetic sight, though clearly useful, was yet of a less sombre
character, will prove not uninteresting to the reader. The following
is culled from that storehouse of the student of the uncanny, Mrs.
Crowe's _Night Side of Nature_, p. 72.

"A few years ago Dr. Watson, now residing at Glasgow, dreamt that he
received a summons to attend a patient at a place some miles from
where he was living; that he started on horseback, and that as he was
crossing a moor he saw a bull making furiously at him, whose horns he
only escaped by taking refuge on a spot inaccessible to the animal,
where he waited a long time till some people, observing his situation,
came to his assistance and released him.

"Whilst at breakfast on the following morning the summons came, and
smiling at the odd coincidence (as he thought it), he started on
horseback. He was quite ignorant of the road he had to go, but by and
by he arrived at the moor, which he recognised, and presently the bull
appeared, coming full tilt towards him. But his dream had shown him
the place of refuge, for which he instantly made, and there he spent
three or four hours, besieged by the animal, till the country people
set him free. Dr. Watson declares that but for the dream he should not
have known in what direction to run for safety."

Another case, in which a much longer interval separated the warning
and its fulfilment, is given by Dr. F. G. Lee, in _Glimpses of the
Supernatural_, vol. i., p. 240.

"Mrs. Hannah Green, the housekeeper of a country family in
Oxfordshire, dreamt one night that she had been left alone in the
house upon a Sunday evening, and that hearing a knock at the door of
the chief entrance she went to it and ther