We requested Mr. Godfrey to make another trial, without of course giving Mrs. - any reason to expect that he would do so. He made a trial at once, thinking that we wanted the result immediately, though he himself thought the time unsuitable; and this was a failure. But on Dec. 8, 1886, he wrote as follows: -

"My friend Mrs. - has just been in, and given me an account of what she experienced last night; she is gone home to write it out for you, and it will be enclosed with mine. I can state that I have not attempted one experiment since I last communicated with you; therefore there are no failures to record. I was at Mrs. - 's house last evening, and she testifies this morning that she had not the faintest suspicion that I intended attempting another experiment. The first words she used on seeing me this morning were (laughingly), ' Well, I saw you last night, anyway'.

"All the interest, as on the former occasion, of course lies with the percipient. I may simply explain that I acted as on the former occasion - viz., concentrated my attention on the percipient, while I was undressing; then devoted some 10 minutes, when in bed, to intense effort to transport myself to her presence, and make my presence felt both by voice and touch, - viz., placing my hand upon the percipient's head. Then I fell asleep, slept well, and was conscious of nothing sufficiently vivid to awake me.

"Directly I awoke at my usual time, about 6.40 a.m., I guessed that I had succeeded, because I instantly remembered that I had dreamt (as last time) of meeting the lady next day, and asking her the same question - viz., whether she had seen me, and the answer was, ' Yes, I saw you indistinctly.'This reflex action is very important, and I would undertake to tell, on any occasion, whether I had failed or succeeded. The words of reply (above) were written down by me on paper1 before hearing the percipient's account.

"This case is, I think, very instructive, because of the sound of voice, as well as of sight".

Mr. Godfrey adds that Mrs. -, though she appeared in good spirits, had been " frightened and a little unnerved "; and that he should not feel justified in repeating the experiment.

The percipient's account, written on December 8th, 1886, is as follows: -

"Last night, Tuesday, Dec. 7th, I went upstairs at half-past 10. I remember distinctly locking the bedroom door, which this morning, to my astonishment, was unlocked. I was soon asleep, and had a strange dream of taking flowers to a grave. Suddenly I heard a voice say 'Wake.' and felt a hand rest on the left side of my head. (I was lying on the right side.) I was wide awake in a second, and heard a curious sound in the room, something like a Jew's harp. I felt a cold breath streaming over me, and violent palpitation of the heart came on; and I also distinctly saw a figure leaning over me. The only light in the room was from the lamp outside, which makes a long line on the wall over the wash-stand. This line was partly obscured by the figure. I turned round at once, and the hand seemed to slip from my head to the pillow beside me. The figure was stooping over me, and I felt it leaning up against the side of the bed. I saw the arm resting on the pillow the whole time it remained. I saw an outline of the face, but it seemed as if a mist were before it. I think the time when it came must have been about half-past 12. It had drawn the curtain of the bed slightly back, but this morning I noticed it was hanging straight as usual.

The figure was undoubtedly that of Mr. Godfrey. I knew it by the appearance of the shoulders and the shape of the face. The whole time it remained, there was a draught of cold air streaming through the room, as if both door and window were open. I heard the dining-room clock strike half-past something; and as I could not sleep again, but heard the clock strike hours and half-hours consecutively up to 5 o'clock, I think I am right in saying the time was half-past 12".

1As to this note, and the one made on the former occasion, Mr. Godfrey writes, "I am very sorry that I never kept the scraps of newspaper edge upon which I jotted down my reflections, and the words which reached me, in the middle of the night, I jotted them down to exclude any invalidation of the inferences on score of defective memory; not thinking it needful to retain them as a check, when I had copied from them into my letters, they were committed to the flames".

I have drawn attention (pp. 125-6, and p. 467) to the fact that the first-hand evidence for telepathic experiences includes no reports of physical changes produced in the material world - which, if they occurred, would be impossible to account for by the hypothesis of a temporary psychical transference from one mind to another. A percipient may have the hallucination of seeing the door opening (p. 82, note); but the door not having really been moved, it of course is not afterwards found open. So, in the above account, the curtain, which seemed to the percipient to be shifted at the time of her experience, was found in its place in the morning. On the other hand, the door, which she says that she had locked, was found unlocked. On being questioned as to this, she replies that the door is habitually locked at night, and that she does not walk in her sleep; but she thinks it probable that, after locking the door, she left the room to get some matches, and that she omitted to lock it again on her return.

If anyone, after this, should be inclined to connect the unlocking with the apparition, I would suggest to him that a "ghost " which has shown its capacity to walk through a closed hall-door would, on finding a bedroom door locked on the inside, be more likely to walk through it than to unlock it.

§ 9. Even a reader who can sufficiently rely on our knowledge of the witnesses to feel that the evidence in these last-described cases is important, may find an objection of another kind. He may question our right to make any theoretic connection between them and the experimental results before discussed. I have called the phenomena of the present chapter transitional, and have pointed out the way in which they form a bridge from the experimental thought-transference of the last chapter to the spontaneous telepathy that will occupy us for the future. But it may seem that the line of connection is after all only an external one; and that there is a deep essential difference - a gulf which cannot be thus lightly crossed - between the more ordinary facts of thought-transference and these apparitions of the agent. It is not only that in the latter the percipient's impression has been of an external object - of something not merely flashed on the mind, but independently located in space: that might be a mere question of degree. The more radical difference is this - that what the one party perceived was not that on which the mind of the other party had been concentrated.