(307) "The following experience happened in the month of November, 1877, in Regency Square, Brighton. My husband [since deceased] was undergoing a course of magnetism from Mr. L., an American. The treatment consisted of rubbing by mesmeric passes down the back, and arms and legs, but in all this there was no intention of putting my husband to sleep. The passes were intended to give strength. Mr. L. called himself, I believe, a professional mesmerist, but at the time we employed him he was not practising as such. He had come to Brighton for rest.

"After the treatment my husband was in the habit of sitting, for some hours, in his wheel-chair, at the top of the Square garden, and on the day of which I am writing he had expressed a wish to stay out rather later than usual. I went into the house for luncheon, leaving him alone, but on looking out of the window a little later, at 2 o'clock, I saw a man standing in front of his chair, and apparently talking to him. I wondered who it was, and concluded it must be a stranger, as I did not recognise the figure, or the wide-awake hat and rather oddly cut Inverness cape which he wore. However, as it very often happened that strangers did stop and speak to him, I was not surprised. I turned away my eyes for a moment, and when I again looked up the garden, the man had disappeared. I could not see him leaving the garden by any of the numerous gates, and remarked to myself how very quickly he must have walked to be so soon out of sight. Regency Square does not possess a tree and scarcely a shrub, so that there was nothing to impede my view.

"When my husband came in a little later, I said to him, carelessly, 'Oh, who was that talking to you in the square just now?'

"He replied, 'No one has spoken to me since you left. No one has even passed near me'.

"'But I saw a man standing in front of you and - as I thought - talking to you about a quarter of an hour ago. His dress was so odd, I couldn't at all tell who it could be'.

"At this my husband laughed, saying, 'I should think not, for there was no one to recognise. I assure you not a soul has been near me since you left'.

" 'Have you been asleep ? ' I asked, though I did not think it very we should certainly rather conceive that what enables A to affect B is the clairvoyant perception itself of B or B's surroundings, than that this perception is a secondary result, dependent on the fact that A has impressed B by dint merely of being asleep or entranced. We should naturally expect that where the conditions are much the same on both sides, A's and B's parts in the phenomenon might bo exactly equal and parallel - each being perceived by the other in the other's own environment.

I may note here that the evidence for a heightening of telepathic susceptibility at the time of death, and in seasons of illness, is not confined to the class of cases now in question. See for instance cases 126, 303, 308, 311. likely. He assured me he had not. So the subject dropped; still in my own mind I knew I had seen the mysterious figure.

1 Pp. 185 - 9, 231-2, and 242-50.

"Two days afterwards, Mr. L., after giving my husband his treatment, came, as was his usual habit, to speak to me before leaving the house. After a few words and directions, he said, 'It is a very odd thing, but the same experience has happened to me twice since I have attended your husband, that, when in quite another place, I have suddenly felt as if I were standing by his side, either in your drawing-room or out there in the garden'.

"I looked at him, and for the first time noticed his overcoat which he had put on before coming into the room, and the wide-awake in his hand. It struck me that these articles were very similar to those worn by the figure I had seen, and that in every way Mr. L. resembled this same figure. I asked him when, and at what time, he had had the last experience spoken of? 'The day before yesterday,' was the reply. * I had just finished an early dinner, and was sitting in front of the fire with a newspaper. It was about 2 o'clock; I remember the time perfectly. Suddenly I felt I was no longer there, but standing near your husband in the Square garden'.

"I then told him of the figure I had seen at the same time and place, and how I now recognised it to be his. Afterwards I asked my husband if he had mentioned the circumstance to Mr. L., but he had not done so, and had indeed forgotten all about it. My husband was the only person to whom I had mentioned the fact of my vision. It could not by any possibility have got round to Mr. L. "Augusta Parker".

[In answer to the inquiry whether she had ever had any other hallucination of the senses, Mrs. Parker replied that she had had one other. It seems likely, however, that this was merely a case of mistaken identity, the figure being seen at the end of a long hotel-passage; and this was her own impression at the time].

This case again seems difficult to explain except on the reciprocal theory. It is true that there is not the same proof in the case of Mr. L. as in that of Mrs. Smith above, that the scene which he saw was transferred, and not spontaneously pictured; for the place was familiar to him, and no unusual details are mentioned. But, on the other hand, his experience seems to have been quite unlike an ordinary dream; its very unusual-ness is what allows us to connect it with Mrs. Parker's simultaneous and unique vision; and if we may regard it as having been conditioned by the presence in the perceived scene of his patient, Mr. Parker - who forms, so to speak, the pivot of the case - the fact that Mr. Parker himself was not consciously affected can still be accounted for on the analogy of such instances as Nos. 242 and 355.1