An account

Write in your next if you had any presentiments during last week. We were going to canal, fishing, and I got up at the first sound of the bell, and taking my razor to shave, began to sharpen it on my hand, and being, I suppose, only half awake, failed to turn the razor, and cut a piece clean out of my left hand. An artery was cut in two places, and bled dreadfully. The fact of Mrs. Gates's alarm and vision of blood has been confirmed to us independently by the daughter, Mrs. Darnley, to whom she described it at the moment. The letter, which we have seen, was dated August 16th, but without the year. The full description shows that the pain was exceedingly severe, and that the writer had fainted. | 4. There is one interesting group of cases where the idea apparently impressed on the percipient has been simply that of the agent's approach. But here, again, great caution is necessary. Popular opinion is extremely apt to invest presentiments of this sort with a character to which they have no claim. Every day, probably, a large number of people have a more or less strong impression, for which they can assign no distinct reason, that some particular person is near them or is coming to see them. That with some people such an impression should prove correct often enough to be remarked on, is only what we should naturally expect ; and it is probable that the impression, when apparently confirmed in this way, would look to memory more 252 TRANSFERENCE OF IDEAS [chap. definite and confident than it had really been. When it is always about the same person that the impression is felt, there is more prima facie ground for supposing that it may be telepathic. But still the circumstances may make it quite unavailable as evidence. For instance, Mr. Rowland Rowlands, of Bryncethin, Bridgend, tells us that when he was manager of the Pen-y-graig Collieries, a man who was acting under him as foreman (since dead) had constantly to come to his house on business in the middle of the night. I was invariably aware of his coming, in dream, before he actually appeared, and would leave my bed and watch for him at the window. He himself noticed this, and told the other men that he never came but he found me at the window watching for him. But those who are in the habit of being waked at night for a special purpose know the way in which the expectation will often haunt their dreams ; and in the absence of more definite assurance that the man was never expected when he did not come, and that he never came unexpected, accident is the