(81) "I respectfully beg to offer you a short statement of my experience on a subject which I do not understand. Let me premise that I am not a scholar, as I left school when 12 years of age in 1827, and I therefore hope you will forgive all sins against composition and grammar. I am a working foreman of masons at Winchester Cathedral, and have been for the last 9 years a resident in this city. I am a native of Edinburgh.

"It is now more than 30 years ago that I was living in London, very near where the Great Western Railway now stands, but which was not then built. I was working in the Regent's Park for Messrs. Mowlem, Burt, and Freeman, who at that time had the Government contract for 3 years for the mason's work of the capital, and who yet carry on a mighty business at Millbank, Westminster. I think it was Gloucester Gate, if 1 mistake not. At all events, it was that gate of Regent's Park to the eastward of the Zoological Gardens, at the north-east corner of the park. The distance from my home was too great for me to get home to meals, so I carried my food with me, and therefore had no call to leave the work all day. On a certain day, however, I suddenly felt an intense desire to go home, but as I had no business there I tried to suppress it, - but it was not possible to do so. Every minute the desire to go home increased. It was 10 in the morning, and I could not think of anything to call me away from the work at such a time. I got fidgety and uneasy, and felt as if I must go, even at the risk of being ridiculed by my wife, as I could give no reason why I should leave my work and lose 6d. an hour for nonsense.

However, I could not stay, and I set off for home under an impulse which I could not resist.

"When I reached my own door and knocked, the door was opened by my wife's sister, a married woman, who lived a few streets off. She looked surprised, and said, 'Why, Skirving, how did you know? ' ' Know what? ' I said. 'Why, about Mary Ann.' I said,' I don't know anything about Mary Ann ' (my wife). ' Then what brought you home at present? ' I said, ' I can hardly tell you. I seemed to want to come home. But what is wrong? ' I asked. She told me that my wife had been run over by a cab, and been most seriously injured about an hour ago, and she had called for me ever since, but was now in fits, and had several in succession. I went upstairs, and though very ill she recognised me, and stretched forth her arms, and took me round the neck and pulled my head down into her bosom. The fits passed away directly, and my presence seemed to tran-quillise her, so that she got into sleep, and did well. Her sister told me that she had uttered the most piteous cries for me to come to her, although there was not the least likelihood of my coming.

This short narrative has only one merit; it is strictly true.

"Alexander Skirving".

In answer to the question whether the time of the accident corresponded with the time when he felt a desire to go home, Mr. Skirving says: -

"I asked my wife's sister what time the accident occurred, and she said, 'An hour and a half ago ' - that is from the time I came home. Now, that was exactly coincident with the time I wanted to leave work. It took me an hour to walk home; and I was quite half an hour struggling in my mind to overcome the wish to leave work before I did so".

He adds: "You ask me if I ever had a similar impression on any other occasion. I never had. It was quite a single and unique experience".

Mr. Skirving's wife is dead. His sister-in-law, Mrs. Vye, is in New Zealand. Her husband, writing from Otago on July 1st, 1885, says that she cannot now give particulars of the occurrence, though she remembers the accident very well.

[Cases 82 to $5 are omitted].

It is necessary, of course [in such cases], to be sure that the line of action adopted by the percipient was really an unlikely one. It may look so, without really having been so. For instance, Miss Lindsay, of 58, Lloyd Street, Greenhays, Manchester, has given us an account of an unusually long walk which she suddenly undertook against advice, with the view of seeing an aunt who was almost a stranger to her.

"The day was very unsuitable for a walk of a number of miles. It threatened to rain, and began before I had got far on my way. I took a wrong turning, too, in a brown study, and returned in a loop to the same road, so that I found myself, late in the afternoon, again near the tram terminus, by which I might have gone home, instead of near my destination. By this time my thin print dress was soaked through by the rain, for I had no cloak, yet I never thought of turning homewards. After walking some 14 miles, I arrived at the house, to find that my aunt had died suddenly of acute rheumatism that morning.

"Now, looking back on the matter, I see that native obstinacy might account for my starting in spite of counsel and weather, but it would not account for my visiting a relation I did not know well, and whom I did know to be particular about appearances, in a dripping dress. What I am particularly sure about is that it never once struck me that my proceeding was odd; which, to my mind, proves conclusively that the initial impulse must have been stronger than an everyday freak".

Still, it may have been a freak, though not an "everyday" one. Miss Lindsay had just returned from the seaside "in excellent health, though in circumstances of considerable worry." Thus an excuse for a long walk may have been readily caught at, and the "native obstinacy " may have done the rest. The case, moreover, lacks the important evidential point which marked those that preceded it - the desire on the part of the supposed agent for the other person's presence. We have another case where a walk was suddenly taken, and pursued in torrents of rain, in spite of two attempts to return, under an idea that an acquaintance was on the point of death. She died the same evening. But she had been for some years an object of care to the person who visited her, and though the latter says, "I had not seen her for some weeks, possibly months before, and I did not know she was ill or likely to die," the case is one which we can hardly include.

The doubt as to what can be considered unlikely conduct on the percipient's part has relegated several alleged cases of this class to the Supplement. Among these are two of considerable interest. One of them is from Mr. Frederick Morgan, of Nugent Hill, Bristol, who records how he once made a sudden and unaccountable exit in the middle of a lecture, and walked home, unconscious of having done anything unusual, to find his house in imminent danger from fire, and his mother strongly desiring his presence. We have Mr. Morgan's assurance that he was thoroughly interested in the discourse, and had even noticed a friend with whom he had planned to walk home when it was over; otherwise the impulse to leave a lecture-room might not seem the best possible specimen of an abnormal experience. The second case is from the Dr. Fischer quoted fin p. 71 here omitted], who went to a jubilee dinner, and "had not been at table more than an hour," when he was forced to go out by an overpowering conviction that some one was in need of his assistance. This heroic step, taken on a comparatively empty stomach, was (as it turned out) fully justified.

But we must remember that an impression of being wanted is a very deep and abiding element of a medical man's experience.

The following case is better worth quotation, for the very reason that the percipient was not a doctor. We received it from Mr. Rowlands, of Bryncethin, near Bridgend, mentioned above (p. 182).

"July 2nd, 1884.