PRESENCE AT A DISTANCE,
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'] Sin,-1 propos of your review of the book entitled "Ghostly Visitors," and of the correspondence which appeared in the Spectator a few weeks ago, I beg to narrate the following incident, which, though not more remarkable than many such stories, has within the last few days come under my own notice, and admits, therefore, of ready corroboration. I have been visiting a sick man, who, though very ill, still lives, and about a week ago he told me the following fact, which had taken place two days previously. He had, one sister, living at some little distance in the same town, but who was old and infirm. On the Monday morning, he had sent to this sister's house to tell her of his serious illness; and in the after-part of that day the sister, taking a dose of lotion in mistake for her medicine, was poisoned, and died about half-past five o'clock in the afternoon. The brother and his wife were in total ignorance of what was taking place at the sister's house, but between five and six o'clock that evening the old man, lying upon his bed, saw distinctly, advancing between the bed and the window, a tall, dark form, which he involuntarily took for his sister ; and knowing that she was too infirm to walk to his house, grew alarmed, and, to use his own words, "Began to pray hard." The figure moved silently up to the bedside, and seemed about to lay its hand upon his head, in the manner in which his sister (who was many years his senior) used to do when he was a lad, and then slowly vanished. He then saw another figure, the form of a man with a book in his hand, standing by the window, who said, in a dis- tinct voice, which the patient declared to be as loud and clear as that in which I had spoken to him, "There is sad trouble to-night!" and then disappeared.
The old man lay quiet until his wife came upstaire, when he told her his story. She tried to make light of it, and told her husband he was " clondering." But next morning brought the news of the sister's death, which had happened between five. and six the previons'eteeing.
The old man who narrated this story has been ill and blind" for nearly twenty years, and though he is of a temperament which would, perhaps, be especially open to such visitations, yet for his veracity, and that of his wife, I can confidently vouch. They are sincere, simple people, and even told this story with. comparatively little wonder, and certainly with no conscious- ness of the strange chapter in human experience they hadi opened.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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