(356) "During the last week of July, 1882, Mr. and Mrs. W. and family had settled themselves comfortably in a house they had hired at the Lizard, Cornwall; and a few days later Mr. Cox, an amateur artist from Liverpool, joined them. Mr. Barwell arranged to meet Mr. Earle, an artist residing in London (both of whose names are appended), on Monday, 7th August, 1882, dine with him and together take the night mail at Paddington, booking for Penryn, Cornwall, the station from whence conveyances take passengers to Helston, and thence to the Lizard, whither they were going to join Mr. W. and family, as on many former occasions.

"Barwell and Earle therefore started according to arrangement by the 8.10 p.m. mail train from Paddington, on the evening of Bank Holiday, Monday, 7 August, 1882. They travelled all night; the train on arrival at Penryn was a little more than 15 minutes late, reaching there on Tuesday morning, 8th August, 1882,'at 7.23 a.m. No other passengers alighted there from that train. They had some difficulty in getting a porter to convey their luggage to the omnibus standing at the station, the driver of which announced that if they could not come at once, he must start without them. Passengers were nothing to him, he had to take charge of and deliver the mail bags at various villages on his route. They roused up the porter and insisted on his attention; in the meantime their train had departed and another train, from Falmouth to London, ran into the station (due 7.24 a.m.). Their luggage was being placed on the omnibus; Earle had already climbed to his seat next the driver, and Barwell, having now seen all their luggage safely deposited on the vehicle, was climbing up next him, when Earle exclaimed: ' Why, look there! ' And on Barwell looking up, he saw in the train, just leaving the station for London, their friend W. from the Lizard, waving his hand to them while eagerly stretching his head out of the window to ascertain, apparently, if they had arrived.

They both cordially returned the salute and the train disappeared round a curve, W. still looking out of the window waving his hand.

"The two friends now made various conjectures as to the why and wherefore of W.'s departure on the very morning of their arrival; they considered it very disappointing that he should thus be obliged to leave, on the day our friendly party was about to be reunited. Earle was greatly depressed about it, and wished to leave all further discussion on the subject until they should ascertain from Mrs. W. the cause for his leaving the Lizard just before their arrival. Amongst the surmises which they made for W. being in the train which came from Falmouth, and not from the Lizard where he was staying, was this: that he had probably received at the Lizard, on Monday, the 7th August, a telegram requiring his immediate attendance in London or elsewhere, and that to prevent a very early start by trap on Tuesday morning from the Lizard to catch the 7.30 a.m. train to London at Penryn, he had made use of a return Bank Holiday excursion steamer from Falmouth to the Lizard; sleeping at Falmouth, and starting by train from there at 7.15 a.m. for London, namely, the train they saw him in.

They arrived in due course at Helston, had breakfast, and sauntered about the old town till the next coach started for the Lizard at 11 o'clock a.m. On nearing the Lizard, they were anxiously on the look-out for the children of Mrs. W., to receive their usual hearty and sincere welcome on arrival of the coach, and to learn from them where their respective domiciles in the village had been chosen. The coach arrived, but none of the W. family were to be seen.

" The luggage was taken off the coach and left on the village green in front of the hotel, till information could be obtained as to where rooms had been engaged. The two friends strolled away, but soon met W.'s two boys, who on being asked why their father had gone away, seemed somewhat surprised at the question, and replied that their father was lying ill at his lodgings, and that their mother was also at home and very anxious about him. The boys accompanied Earle and Barwell to their father's house in the village, when Mrs. W. came out and greeted them cordially, telling them briefly that Mr. W. had had a serious fainting fit that morning, and that she was. watching him with considerable anxiety.

"Mr. Cox now came in from his morning's work, and after the exchange of salutations with Earle and Barwell, related to them the following details of Mr. W.'s fainting fit; That he, Mr. W., and his two boys started from the Lizard village to Housel Cove to bathe, at 7 o'clock that morning, a distance a little over half a mile. When W. came out of the sea, and was leaning against a rock, in a sitting posture, he fainted quite away. Cox was dreadfully shocked and alarmed, for at one time he could discover no action of the heart, and he feared he might be dead or dying. He used all the means he could think of, and placed W. in a more recumbent position, which seemed a more favourable one, for pulsation was then discernible, and W. partially recovered, but was too weak to move for a long time. Mrs. W. was fetched, and then breakfast was taken down to the Cove, and when vitality and strength had sufficiently returned to enable W. to climb the steep ascent with assistance, they started home.

" The fainting of W. occurred at 7.30 a.m. at Housel Cove, the Lizard, at the precise time when Earle and Barwell saw W. waving his hand to them from the train at Penryn.

"The question has been put to Mr. W. whether he thought of or saw Earle or Barwell, either just before or during his seizure, but he remembers nothing of the kind.

"(Signed)

"Charles Earle, 9, Duke Street, Portland Place, London.

"H. G. Barwell, Surrey Street, Norwich.

"Charles H. Cox, Shrewsbury Road, N., Birkenhead".

In reply to inquiries, Mr. Barwell says: "Both Earle and I have very good sight. My impression is that the person I saw looking from the train window wore a soft, flexible, round hat." He can recall no other experience of hallucination, except one which occurred many years ago, at a time when he was not yet fully recovered from a severe fever.

Mr. Cox writes, on January 2nd, 1885:-

"I was at the Lizard, in Cornwall, when my friends, Earle and Barwell, saw (as they believed) the ' double ' of my friend W., whom, at the time, I was instrumental in bringing round after his attack of illness. My part in the affair was simply resuscitating Mr. W. from a very serious condition.

" C. H. Cox".

[Here, again, mistaken identity must be recognised as a possibility; but there are several points which combine to make it improbable. The fact which the appearance forced on the minds of the two friends - namely, W.'s departure - was so little in accordance with their expectations that it distinctly surprised them; they were thus in a wholly different attitude from that (say) of awaiting a friend's arrival, when the senses are on the alert for anything at all resembling him. Again, the figure seen seems to have given unmistakable signs of friendly recognition; so that we should not only have to suppose that the percipients mistook someone for their friend, but that they mistook for him someone who was known to them, or at any rate to one of them - clearly a much more unlikely occurrence. It will be observed, moreover, that the difficulties of assuming a mistake as to identity are immensely increased where two persons with good sight would have had to share in it. Still, it is conceivable - though scarcely compatible with the account - that the first sign of recognition was given by Mr. Earle; and that a stranger, seeing this sign, returned it, either in joke, or imagining that the giver of it must be some one that he had known and ought to recognise].

[Gurney concludes this section with a more complete account than had yet been published of the well-known Wynyard case - the apparition of John Wynyard at the time of his death in 1785 to his brother and Sir John Sherbrooke. To the latter he was unknown. This case is here omitted. - Ed].