(297) "The following is the exact account of the curious appearance to me of my brother. It was either in 1874 or 1875. My brother was third mate on board one of Wigram's large ships. I knew he was somewhere on the coast of Australia, but I have no recollection of my having been thinking of him in any special way; though as he was my only brother, and we were great friends, there was a very close bond always between us. My father was living in the country, and one evening I went into the kitchen by myself, soon after 10, to get some hot water from the boiler. There was a large Duplex lamp in the kitchen, so it was quite light; the servants had gone to bed, and I was to turn out the lamp. As I was drawing the water, I looked up, and, to my astonishment, saw my brother coming towards me from the outside door of the kitchen. I did not see the door open, as it was in a deep recess, and he was crossing the kitchen. The table was between us, and he sat down on the corner of the table furthest away from me. I noticed he was in his sailor uniform with a monkey jacket on, and the wet was shining on his jacket and cap.

I exclaimed, ' Miles! Where have you come from? ' He answered in his natural voice, though very quickly, 'For God's sake, don't say I'm here.' This was all over in a few seconds and as I jumped towards him he was gone. I was very much frightened, for I had really thought it was my brother himself; and it was only when he vanished that I realised it was only an appearance. I went up to my room and wrote down the date on a sheet of paper, which I put away in my writing-table, and did not mention the circumstance to any one.

"About three months afterwards my brother came home, and the night of his arrival I sat with him in the kitchen, while he smoked. I asked him in a casual manner if he had had any adventures, and he said, 'I was nearly drowned at Melbourne.' He then told me he was ashore without leave, and on returning to the ship, after midnight, he slipped off the gangway between the side of the ship and the dock. There was very little space, and if he had not been hauled up at once, he must have been drowned. He remembered thinking he was drowning, and then became unconscious.1 His absence without leave was not found out, so he escaped the punishment he expected. I then told him of how he had appeared to me, and I asked him the date. He was able to fix it exactly, as the ship sailed from Melbourne the same morning, which was the reason of his fear of being punished, as all hands were due to be on board the evening before. The date was the same as the date of his appearance to me, but the hours did not agree, as I saw him soon after 10 p.m., and his accident was after midnight. He had no recollection of thinking specially of me at the time, but he was much struck by the coincidence, and often referred to it.

He did not like it, and often when he went away said, ' Well, I hope I shan't go dodging about as I did that time'.

"I was about 22 at the time, and he was 20. I was always rather afraid I might see him or others after this, but I have never, before or since, had any hallucination of the sense of sight. My brother died abroad three years ago, and I had no warning then, nor do I imagine I shall ever see anything again. I am never on the look out for things of that kind, but if I ever saw anything again I would make a note of it. I destroyed the note I made of the date as soon as I had verified it, not thinking it could interest or concern anyone else.

"Ruth Paget".

[I received a third-hand account of this incident two years before the above was written, and this older account completely agreed with the present more recent one; which shows, at any rate, that the incidents stand out with distinctness in Miss Paget's memory. In conversation, Miss Paget told me that at the moment when she mistook the apparition for her brother himself, she accounted for the wetness, which she so distinctly remarked, by supposing that he had got wet through with rain. She is quite sure that the coincidence of night was clearly made out when she and her brother talked the matter over - which of course makes her statement as to the coincidence of date technically incorrect, as the accident occurred after midnight. If longitude be allowed for, the impression must have followed the accident by about 10 hours].

The next case is from Marian Hughes, confidential maid and secretary to Miss Julia Wedgwood, of 31, Queen Anne Street, W.

"December, 1882.

(298) "In the winter of 1878, my sister, Mrs. Barnes, was much pressed to marry a man named Benson, who was much attached to her; and, not succeeding in his suit, he told her if she would not marry him, he would take employment in India. He obtained a situation to go out to Madras.

"One Saturday night, about 9 o'clock, I, in the following spring, went to see my sister; she was much agitated, and told me that, just before I came in, she had been on her knees scrubbing the floor of a room on the ground floor (with a window that anyone could stand at and look in), when she heard herself called twice, 'Annie, Annie,' and looking up at the window, she saw what looked to her like the face of the friend who had wanted to marry her. She at once got up and rushed out, but finding no one there became convinced she had seen an apparition announcing the death of her friend. On the following Monday, she sent to the firm in the City with which he was connected, and was informed that he had been ill, but was better when last heard of. Shortly afterwards, knowing Mr. H. Wedgwood's interest in this kind of story, I informed him of the occurrence, before it was known how it fared with my sister's friend in India.

1 See p. 387.

"My sister, some weeks afterwards, told me that she had learnt from his employers in the City that he had died on the evening of the day she had seen the apparition in London. "Marian Hughes".

The Registrar of the Diocese of Madras writes to us that he can find-no record of Benson's burial; and an exhaustive search in the records of the India Office has been equally unsuccessful. We learn, however, from the India Office that the returns do not profess to be absolutely complete.

Writing on the case on March 4,1883, Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood says: -

"The story was told me by Marian Hughes, my daughter's confidential maid and attached friend, whose truthfulness may be entirely relied on. I wanted to hear it from her sister herself, but found that she considered it too solemn a subject to speak about. I was told of the apparition of the friend in India shortly after it occurred, and requested Marian to inform me as soon as they had news of the result." He adds: -

"My note of the case [i.e., the original note made when he first heard Marian Hughes' account] was dated May 16th, 1878. I say, 'One Saturday evening about six weeks ago,' etc. On July 19th, in an article, I say, ' By the end of June it was known that Annie's friend had died suddenly on the evening of Saturday, 30th March, the day noted by Annie as the day of the apparition.' "

[Mrs. Barnes has had an auditory hallucination on one other occasion, when she heard herself called by the voice of her husband, who, it turned out, had died at a distance two days before].

It is rare for nautical stones to reach the level of evidence. The following, however, is a case where the testimony seems hardly to leave room for a doubt that a hallucination of a particular kind was experienced at a particular crisis; and the question of its interpretation is a matter not of nautical but of scientific judgment. The statement (which was first published in the Spiritualist) was drawn up sixteen days after the incident occurred, through the prompt energy of Mr. W. H. Harrison, and on the suggestion of the late Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, F.R.S., who had questioned Captain Blacklock on the subject.