An account

It must have been in the year 1849 or 1850. I have never had any further experience — at least nothing of the same kind that I could detail in as circumstantial a manner. She has long lost sight of Madame H. ; and Mdlle. F. and Frau M. are dead. In the next few cases the percipient was apparently in a perfectly normal state. (376) The following incident is recorded in All the Year Round for May 6, 1859, by a physician who does not give his name, but who says that it was described to him as a personal experience by Prof. Wilson, of Edinburgh. The physician himself writes sensibly, and much of his paper is devoted to explaining the purely subjective nature of many of the hallucinations which have been marvelled at as apparitions. Prof. Wilson (as reported) begins by describing a picnic party, to which he went with some friends in Ireland : — The thick of the dinner being over, we strolled out, or lolled, in that pleasant prolongation of a repast, which is the best part of a thing of that sort ; but as we knew that, according to the programme, our time was limited, on account of some other spots which we had yet to visit, I was deputed to see, by a reference to my watch, that we did not overstay the hour. Accordingly, I had placed my watch — a fine old silver warmingpan, the paternal gift — on a low fragment of ruin that was just opposite to me, and in the intervals of conversation I looked at it, though indeed not quite so often as at the face of Mary M. Suddenly — I perfectly remember the hands were pointing to twenty minutes past two in the sunshine — the watch arrested miy gaze, while a remarkable feeling passed over me. I said to myself, but to this hour I know not why, ' At this exact time my brother R. is dying in India.' The sensation came and went with the rapidity of those unaccountable impressions ' Which make the present, while the flash doth last, Seem but the semblance of an unknown past. ' Yet, so much was I struck with the incident, that taking out my pocketbook, saying nothing, however, to anybody as to why I did so, I noted down the day and hour of this strange visitation of thought. I did not exactly place confidence in the prevision, yet I could not shake off an unpleasant feeling about it. At length the incident became merged in the frequent repetition to myself that it was ' all fudge,' and I might call it forgotten (there was plenty of time for this, for it was not in the days of steam), when a letter from India brought our family the startling intelligence that my brother had actually died there on the very day when I had made the entry in my pocket-book, and at an hour which, by allowance for latitude [no dou,bt a slip of the writer's own], corresponded exactly with that marked by my watch when I had my eyes on it. Our correspondent also informed us that ray brother had, in his last moments, mentioned me. ^ 1 The following narrative is very similar, and in detail also closely resembles case 72. I do not give it an evidential number, as it is not certain that the witness was cognisant of the percipient's impression before the news of the death arrived. Mrs. Harper, of Gotham, Bristol, narrates : — 1884. My father-in-law, Mr. A. Harper, told me that at one time of his life he was in the Spanish wool trade, and that it necessitated one of the partners residing in Spain, and in consequence his cousin, Mr. James B., went to Spain. Before leaving Bristol he became engaged to a Miss B. Some time after his departure, Miss B. was at a large party, seated at the piano, when she suddenly withdrew her hands, sobbing hysterically, saying, ' James B. is dead ; James B. is dead. ' She could not explain how she knew it, but had a most convincing consciousness that it was so, and he really had died in Spain at the time of Miss B.'s distress.