An account

So far as I can remember, my father was still delii'ious at the time he said he had gone to see me. I told no one of the experience at the time, for I was living by myself. I have never, that I can recollect, had any other experience of the kind, and am not subject to any ' hallucination of the senses.' I am bound in fairness to tell you that I am an entire disbeliever in the supernaturalness of such experiences. This infidelity may be due to my never having heard of any such experiences which could not be explained on the coincidence principle. [Mr. Lindesay is of course right in his disbelief of the supernaturalness of such phenomena; but it has not struck him that the 462 SUPPLEMENT. [chap. alternative to supposing them supernatural is not necessarily to suppose them accidental. His concluding comment reproduces the remarks of Lord Brougham, as to which see Vol. I., pp. 396-7. I need hardly point out again that every isolated case of coincidence might be accidental, and that the argument for telepathy is essentially cumulative. This case may perhaps have been reciprocal ; but we clearly have no proof that the father's experience was anything more than a purely subjective impression or dream.] (500) From a lady occupying a responsible position, which obliges her, out of regard to others, to withhold her name from publication. Her viva voce account, given to me in the room where the experience occurred, made it almost certain that she was in a state of normal wakefulness at the time ; still, as she had been in bed for some little time, I have placed the case in this chapter rather than the next. '< ]yfay 2nd, 1886. On the night of the 18th December, 1872, I had retired to bed about 11 o'clock. The bed, I may mention, is so placed that any person entering the room, must pass quite round it before reaching the side on which I lay. I had perhaps been in bed 20 minutes, and had been thinking over the events of the evening, a pupils' concert, when suddenly I saw my husband by the door ; he moved swiftly round the bed till he came close to me, when he as suddenly disappeared. So astonished was T, that involuntarily I called him by name. The gas was alight, as usual, in the room ; and as I knew that I had not been asleep, and had not heard a sound to alarm me, I had not a doubt, any more than I have at this moment, that the vision was that of my absent husband. On the 30th December of the same year, I received a letter by the Australian mail, from a gentleman, telling me that my husband had met with a serio