Then suddenly I was tempted to cross the boundary line. I hesitated and reasoned thus: "I have died once and if I go back, soon or late, I must die again. If I stay some one else will do my work, and so the end will be as well and as surely accomplished, and shall I die again? I will not, but now that I am so near I will cross the line and stay." So determining I moved cautiously along the rocks. There was danger of falling over the side of the road, for the pathway around was but narrow. I thought not of the archways, I placed my back against the rock and walked sideways.

I reached the exact centre of the rock, which I knew by a carved knob in the rock marking the exact boundary. Here, like Caesar at the Rubicon, I halted and parleyed with conscience. It seemed like taking a good deal of responsibility, but I determined to do it, and advanced the left foot across the line. As I did so, a small, densely black cloud appeared in front of me and advanced toward my face. I knew that I was to be stopped. I felt the power to move or to think leaving me. My hands fell powerless at my side, my shoulders and head dropped forward, the cloud touched my face and I knew no more.

Without previous thought and without apparent effort on my part, my eyes opened. I looked at my hands and then at the little white cot upon which I was lying, and realising that I was in the body, in astonishment and disappointment, I exclaimed: "What in the world has happened to me? Must I die again?"

I was extremely weak, but strong enough to relate the above experience despite all injunctions to quiet. Soon afterward I was seized with vomiting, severe and uncontrollable. About this time Dr. J. H. Sewel, of Rockwood, Tenn., called upon a friendly visit, not knowing I was sick. I was hiccoughing terribly, and in consultation he said, "Nothing short of a miracle, I fear, can save him".

After many days, it seemed to me, the temperature began to creep up and soon ran above normal, but only a little, wavered back and forth for a few days, and settled at a half degree below, where it remained during the greater part of convalescence, when it mounted to normal, the pulse mounted to above fifty for keeps, as boys say at marbles, then went to seventy-six, and I made a rapid and good recovery, for having travelled some hundreds of miles during the interval, as I close this paper my pulse stands at eighty-four and is strong, just eight weeks from "the day I died," as some of my neighbours speak of it.

There are plenty of witnesses to the truth of the above statements, in so far as my physical condition was concerned. Also to the fact that just as I described the conditions about my body and in the room, so they actually were. I must, therefore, have seen these things by some means.

The following are questions addressed to Dr. Wiltse about his experience, and his answers:-

1. Q. You perceived two gentlemen standing in the door. Were they actually standing in the door? A. They were.

2. Q. Was your face as pale as you perceived it to be? A. It was much paler as compared with some days before, but one witness states that, as compared with only a short time before becoming unconscious, the face appeared of a dark purple hue.

3. Q. Did you not recognise any person at all among those whom you perceived in the room? A. I had no thought of names nor ideas of relationship. I had a strong sense of good fellowship, if I may so term it, but my interest in each seemed alike. I must have forgotten all personalities.

4. Q. Did the washes which you perceived the rain to have made actually exist? A. They did to a marked degree, there having been heavy rains for many days consecutively.

5. Q. Did the fabric in which you seemed to be clothed resemble any which you had ever worn? A. It did not, and I distinctly recollect thinking that I had no such clothing in the house, although it did not then occur to me that I had never possessed such a suit. I think, however, that my brother who was visiting me had on something such a suit, but cannot be certain, as I cannot learn that I made any reference to any suit in the room as being like it while rehearsing my experience after awaking. If I could see a suit like it I should recognise it at once.

6. Q. Were you previously familiar with the notion that a delicate thread, in cases of trance, connects the ethereal organism with the ordinary body? A. Yes, and this will seem to you a case of expectancy. I deem it fair to your Society to state, however, that so far from believing the theory was I that in a volume of fiction upon which I am engaged I had set down an entirely different theory as emanating from one of the characters who is made to teach my own private views strongly enough. When I discovered the thread my mind did not go back to any previous recollections or ideas upon the subject, as I should suppose would naturally be the case.

Dr. Wiltse's narrative is followed by corroborative statements from five persons who were present in the sick-room, viz., his wife and sister, the physician in attendance, and two friends. These statements are given in full in the Proceedings, and show that the description of his experience given by Dr. Wiltse immediately after recovering consciousness was in all essential details the same as the account printed above. They also confirm what he reports of the actual external facts of the case, the illness and attendant circumstances.

Here, at any rate, whatever view we take as to the source or the content of Dr. Wiltse's vision, the fact remains that the patient, while in a comatose state, almost pulseless, and at a temperature much below the normal, did, nevertheless, undergo a remarkably vivid series of mental impressions. It is plain, therefore, that we may err in other cases by assuming prematurely that all power of perception or inference has ceased.

Setting aside the manifestly dream-like or symbolical element of the vision, we observe that Dr. Wiltse believes that his perception of the people in the room, and of the rain-washed streets outside, was of a clairvoyant type. But this cannot be proved; for the picture of the streets might be due to unconscious inference; and some acuteness of perception, like that of the lethargic hypnotised subject, might account for his knowledge of movements in the room made after his eyes were closed. However this may be, it is probable that if he had actually died, and if some kind of message from him had been subsequently received, that message might have included facts as to the scene of death which the survivors would have believed to have been unknown to him while still living, but which he did in fact acquire during his comatose condition.

I may add that since the first publication of Dr. Wiltse's narrative both Dr. Hodgson and I have made his personal acquaintance, and have further corresponded with him on psychical experiments, with the result that the experience just cited, though it cannot, of course, be made evidential, has risen in importance in our eyes. See also another experience of Dr. Wiltse's in 663 A.

A case similar in many respects to the one just quoted is that of the Rev. L. J. Bertrand, given in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 194. During a dangerous ascent of the Titlis, Mr. Bertrand separated from his companions, sat down to rest, and became paralysed by the cold. His head, however, remained clear, and he experienced the sensation described by Dr. Wiltse of passing out of his body and remaining attached to it by "a kind of elastic string." While in this condition, he had clairvoyant impressions about his absent companions, and much astonished them on their return by describing their doings to them. The case, which I have not space here to quote, is very remote and therefore probably contains errors of detail; but it is most likely that some genuine clairvoyance was exhibited.