COINCIDENCES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—My father used to tell a story that in his early youth— more than seventy years ago—he was dining with a Lady Pocock and her daughter at Twickenham, I think in what was afterwards called Orleans House. During the dinner he spoke contemptuously of the belief in second-sight, but was checked by a sign from Miss Pocock. When they were alone she explained to him the interruption by saying that some time before she and her mother were sitting together in the drawing-room, which was on the ground floor, and had a window looking into the garden at the back of the house. Suddenly she saw a stranger staring at them through the window, and, on her uttering an exclamation of surprise, her mother looked up and recognised in the intruder her own brother, whom she had believed to be in Africa, and whom his niece had never seen. Lady Pocock rushed to the window to greet him, wondering, no doubt, why he had come upon them thus unawares, and why vagrant-like he had taken the house in the rear, instead of going straight to the front door. But before she reached the window he had vanished ; nor could he be found anywhere in the garden. Likewise the gardener, who was working in front of the house, assured her that he had been there all the time, and that no visitor could. possibly have either come or gone without his seeing him. The daughter took a memorandum of the day ; and they , afterwards learnt that on that day her uncle had died in Africa. The mother had felt the shock so keenly that the subject was never alluded to in her presence. It may serve to guarantee the fidelity of Lord Tollemache's report of the strange narrative if I mention that, being a staunch Protestant, he retained to the last his repugnance to the belief in second-sight, which he seemed to regard as covertly opening a breach to the hostile array of non-Biblical miracles, from that of St. Januarius downwards.
This story of second-sight seems to me worth recording, as, unlike so many of such stories, it does not rest on the ipse (or ipsa) dint of a single witness. But I own that I wish that (nolentes volentes) the mother, the daughter, and the gardener could all have been put into the witness-box and cross.. examined. It would then have appeared, among other things, whether the exact hour as well as the day of the mysterious event had been noted down, and whether, if so, due allowance had been made for the difference between English an& African time.—I am, Sir, &C., LIONEL A. TOLLEXACHE.
Hotel Sonnenberg, Engelberg, August 7th.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—The following may perhaps interest your readers. This morning I had been reading Mr. Frederic H. Balfour's letter in the Spectator of July 31st, referring to his finding in a paper the announcement of a friend's death, whom he had seen in a dream the very night before, after having lost sight of him for several years. Afterwards, in the course of the forenoon, I was led to think (probably by a kind of what we call " Ideen-Association ") of an English friend of mine, to whom I had not written for a considerable time. After lunch I sat down in my study, and turning over the pages of the Christian World of August 5th, I was at once startled by finding the name of my friend mentioned in a list of ministers, who have died during the last twelve months. May I add that it was only by chance that I had the pleasure of reading that number of your valuable paper, which has so linked, together those two coincidences.—I am, Sir, &c., PAUL JAEGER,
Hohenjesar, Frankfurt, August 9th. Cand, rev. min.
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