An account

Oxford, 13th October, 1883. (55) In the years 1851 and 1852, when I was from 15 to 17 years of age, I was left in charge of a considerable extent of building and other estate work at Didcot, Berks, at which some 50 or 60 men were employed ; and for so young a person a good deal of responsibility was put upon me, as I was only visited occasionally, about once a fortnight on an average, by one of the seniors responsible for the work. Occasionally this senior was my brother Joseph, about eight years older than myself, and who had always taken, even for a brother, a very great deal of interest in my welfare, and between whom and myself a very strong sympathy existed. I was very rarely apprised by letter of these visits, but almost invariably before my brother came (sometimes the day before, at other times at some previous hour on the same day) it would suddenly come into my mind as a quite clear and certain thing, how, I cannot say, that my brother was coming to see me, and would arrive about a certain hour, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon, and I cannot remember a single occasion on which I had received one of these vivid impressions, on which he did not arrive as expected. I had, without thinking particularly about it, got to act upon the faith of these impressions as much as if I had received a letter ; and the singularity of the occurrence was not brought very forcibly to my own mind until one day when the foreman asked me to give him instructions as to how a portion of the work should be carried out — when I answered 254 TRANSFERENCE OF IDEAS [chap. him quite naturally, ' Oh, leave it to-day, Joe will be here about 4 o'clock this afternoon, and I would rather wait and ask his advice about it.' The foreman, who had access to my office, and usually knew what letters I received, said, ' Perhaps it would be as well, but I didn't know that you had received a letter from Oxford.' I had to explain to him that I had not received a letter, and that it was merely by an impression 1 knew my brother was coming, and upon this I got a hearty laugh only for my credulity. As my brother turned up all right at the time named, the foreman would not be convinced that I had not been playing a trick upon him, and that I had not received a letter and put it away so that he might not know of it. The strangeness of the matter then induced me to arrange with the foreman always to let him know, as soon as I might have the opportunity, of the occurrence of these impressions, so that he might check them as well as myself ; and he, although he gave up all attempts to explain the singularity of the thing, came afterwards to trust the certainty of their being right as much as I did myself. I told my brother of them, who was very much puzzled, and could not account for so strange an occurrence ; but on comparing my statements as to the time when the impressions occurred to me, in a number of cases, he said that, so far as he could check the time, it would seem to have been always at or about the time when he first received his instructions, or knew of the arrangement having been made for him to come. As both the foreman and my brother have been dead for some years past, I have no means of comparing their recollections of these matters with my own. Perhaps I should add that my brother was living at Oxford at the time, 10 miles or so from Didcot; and that although I was visited from time to time by other gentlemen beside my brother, I cannot remember having had these previous impressions in any case except his.