An account

About ten years ago Admiral Johnson, of Little Baddow, Essex, told me as follows : One day he was walking with companions in a wood, when he suddenly saw his brother Arthur, in uniform, and said, ' There's my brother ! ' It was discovered afterwards that the brother died at that time. We have failed to trace this occurrence ; and it may be surmised as possible that the hero of the story, which was told in casual conversation, was not Admiral Johnson 156 GENERAL CRITICISM OF THE EVIDENCE. [chap assuming to have been founded on a genuine coincidence of a less exact kind (p. 139). Thus, a gentleman strikingly describes to us how a friend of his, while walking in Barnsley, and when no one was within 30 yards of her, felt herself seized by two hands round the waist ; her only enlightenment on the matter being that on the very same afternoon her brother went down with the ill-fated training ship, the ' Eurydice.' On applying direct to the lady, we find that the hallucination took place two days before the dreadful accident. The more remote the incident, and the less the authority for the story, the more clinching the correspondence becomes, till its perfection is really quite wearisome. On the day of his vision, and at that very moment, himself, but some one else. That is, the story may be third-hand, and is of no evidential value. The following- narrative from Mrs. Lonsdale, of Lichfield, is another instance in point : — I was sitting next my dear old friend, Dr. (since Sir Thomas) Watson, at a London dinner-party. I think some one on the opposite side of the table said to him, ' A physician in your extensive practice must hear and see strange things sometimes.' He said, ' Indeed we do. ' He then turned to me and said, ' You know that I am a matter-of-fact person, and I will now tell you the strangest of all the strange things that ever happened to me. ' I was called in, some years ago, to see a man, a stranger to me, who had been taken dangerously ill at his chambers in the Temple. Directly I saw him I knew that he had not more than 24 hours to live, and I told him that he must lose no time in settling any worldly affairs, and in sending for any relations whom he might wish to see. He told me he had only one near relation, a brother, who was in one of the Midland counties. By my patient's desire, I sat down and wrote to the brother, telling him that if he would find the sick man still alive he must come off at once, on receipt of my letter. The next morning, while I was visiting my patient, who wa