An account

Since reading your letter last night, I have carefully gone over the guests of that dinner party, and find them all gone but one, Frank Ashton, Esq., The Laurels, Twickenham, and he is too ill to read or to answer a letter. At the time I speak of, I was the widow of the Rev. J. Lowthian, vicar of Wharton. My father was the Rev. John Jackson, vicar of Over. / never experienced a similar feeling. I am not at all naturally inclined to depression, and am perfectly free from what is commonly understood by superstition. In conversation, Mrs. Bull told me that she has never in her life had a fit of hysterics, or of unaccountable weeping, except on this occasion. The writer of the following narrative is the editor of a well-known northern newspaper, and was formerly special foreign correspondent of a London paper. A few weeks before the occurrence here described, he had a curious impression corresponding with the death of a friend, which is narrated in the following chapter (case 103). t 2 276 EMOTIONAL AND MOTOR EFFECTS. [chap. December 11th, 1884. (73) On the 3rd of May in the same spring [1882], my wife, while taking tea with my daughter, was suddenly seized with an epileptic fit, and fell heavily to the floor, striking her forehead on the fender ; she was never conscious again, but died the next day. This accident happened between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. For nearly 5 years my wife had intermittently suffered from epilepsy, but for some 3 months before her death seemed to have completely recovered, which apparent fact had caused much joy in our little family circle, as the poor dear had been a great sufferer. I set this down to show that her death or serious illness was not at all expected at the time it happened. On the morning of the 3rd of May I left for the City, and as my wife kissed her hand to me at the window, I thought how remarkably well and ' like her old self she appeared. I went to business in ' high spirits,' and left her in the same ; but somewhere about the time she fell — neither my daughter nor I have been able to fix the time within an hour — I suddenly fell into such a fit of gloom that I was powerless to go on with my work, and could only sit with my face between my hands, scarcely able to speak to my colleagues in the same office, who became alarmed as they had never seen me in any but a cheerful mood. I was at the time editing England, and as friend after friend dropped into my room, and wanted to know what ailed me, I could only explain my sensation in a phrase (which they