In conclusion I will say that the heaviness of feeling that so oppressed me has all disappeared. I have never felt that peculiar, that indescribable weight that was crushing out my very life, since Sunday morning, the 17th of December. Of course, I feel sad because of my loss, but it is altogether a different feeling.

T. F. Ivey.

Mrs. Ivey adds the following corroboration: -

February 14th, 1894.

Prof. James, - It was after daylight on the morning of 17th December 1893, that I had the dream. I thought that I was at a strange place. I had gone there in a wagon. I had no recollection of my husband going with me, but he was there and seemed to be a particular friend of the family. It was a large family, and I was very much struck with their manner and dress and general appearance. I observed the house closely and the scantiness of its furniture and the slipshod way it seemed to be kept. The children were getting lessons, and would go to my husband for assistance. The largest one of the children, a girl about budding into womanhood, sat on my husband's lap and was very affectionate. I was not the least jealous of this girl, only I wondered how in the world came my husband so intimate with those people whom I had never seen or even heard of before. They did not seem to pay any attention to me, but to devote themselves entirely to my husband, who seemed to be the centre of attraction. Suddenly my husband dropped over and died, - and then I seemed to be at home, and awoke.

About 12 m. the same day, we got a telegram from Copeville, Tex., that our son was fatally injured, and to come at once. My husband went immediately on a freight train. Through some misunderstanding I had to go in a private conveyance across the country. As soon as I entered the house I thought of my dream, for it was all just as I had dreamt, even the house and its surroundings. The peculiar dress and manner of the people, their scantiness of furniture and negligent housekeeping, even to the children getting their lessons, and the larger girl who wept over our son like her heart would break - all were just as I had dreamed that very morning. No one could have told that the dead boy was not their son instead of ours. We learned that he was indeed an intimate and most particular friend of the family; that he spent more of his time there than anywhere else; that all the children looked on him as a brother and that the larger girl loved him more than a brother. With the single exception of putting my husband in place of my son, the dream was a real and vivid anticipation of the actual.

A. L. Ivey.

Even this great inaccuracy - the substitution of the husband for the son - does not, I think, destroy the impression of a true relation between the actual and the visionary scene.

In a subsequent letter Mr. Ivey gives some further particulars: -

Forney, Texas, April 2oth, 1895.

Mr. Richard Hodgson, - Dear Sir, - Replying to yours of the 12th inst, I will say: -

1st. My son was hurt about 11.30 a.m. Sunday, December 17th, 1893.

2nd. I awoke about 3 a.m. the same morning, but not being able to go back to sleep from some undefinable cause, I got up about 4 o'clock and kindled a fire and remained up.

3rd. He was returning from church with two other young men in a buggy when the horses took fright, and, running away, came in contact with a tree which, striking my son, produced the fatal injuries from which he died.

4th. The blow produced concussion of the brain, from which he was unconscious the greater part of the time. He died about 1 a.m., Tuesday 19th.

After more than a year I know of nothing I can add to the letter I wrote Prof. James. I believe it contained as near the truth as it was possible for me to write. As near as I can remember, for six weeks or more before the accident I was to a great extent two different distinct persons. During the day, I was my normal self - satisfied - interested in my business and going along as usual. But at night I was altogether another person. I would generally take a short nap and then awake with the most awful feeling of weight and depression that it is possible to conceive of. I could seldom sleep all night (though I am usually a sound sleeper), I would lie and toss vainly trying to sleep - feeling all the time that there was nothing more to live for - that all that was worth living for had gone out of my life - that I had lived too long - and that my life was nothing henceforth but a burden. When I would awake after a short nap, I felt like I imagine a person must feel who was to have been hanged that day and realised the dreadful fact immediately after awakening. This expresses it better than anything I can think of.

I once called the attention of a friend to my singular condition - it was something unusual in my life - I couldn't understand it - I remarked to him that I was so low-spirited as soon as I went to bed that I could not rest, and that I could see no sense in it, as my business was in good condition. I thought possibly that I was going to be sick, as I was only troubled at night and was as cheerful and full of life during the day as I usually am. I don't know, for some time, that this state of mind was in any way associated with my son, but gradually he became the centre, as it were, around which the awfulness seemed to crystallise. On Sunday morning, December 17th, I awoke about 3 o'clock, and the feeling was so heavy that I could not stand it and got up and made me a fire. As soon as breakfast was over I got pen and paper and ordered my daughter to write to Walter to come home at once.

I remember well walking the floor after breakfast; and, turning to a friend who was at my house, I remarked to him, "Jo, I am troubled to death about Walter - I see ahead of him - and there is ruin." I then called my daughter, and, getting material and placing it on the table before her, ordered her to write to Walter then to come home at once.

Understand though, I never dreamed of any accident happening to him that day - I never thought of his getting hurt, or I would have telegraphed to him. I was simply troubled to death about him and couldn't tell why. It never once crossed my mind that he was in any danger at all. I had no premonition of any evil happening to him. I was simply troubled to death, and he seemed to be the centre of it. I am a farmer. Buckle says that farmers and sailors are the most superstitious of people. Possibly this may be true, but I don't think I am the least so. I never had anything in the way of a premonition in my life before, though I once had a remarkable experience in connection with my first child who died at nine years of age; still it was in no sense a premonition. In the whole range of human experience I know of no class of phenomena so inexplicable as premonitions. Even if Spiritualism be true, I cannot see how spirit intercourse can explain it. T. F. Ivey.

This case seems to tell against the view that the father's transcendental foresight discerned the accident long beforehand. It suggests rather that some intelligence to which the impending accident was long previously known may have endeavoured to inform the father, but only when the accident was just about to occur was able to impress the father still more strongly, and also to inform the mother of the event, though with much symbolic confusion.

Can we suppose that the boy's own spirit was thus aware beforehand of his own impending death, and was able to transmit the knowledge to the father, although not to the boy's own supraliminal consciousness with the desire, perhaps, that the father should avert the accident by summoning the boy home? Far-fetched though this sounds, we have a few cases of so-called "banshees " where the fact that all the family except the dying man himself are roused by the alarming sounds, looks as though those premonitory sounds were somehow caused by the spirit which is about to quit the flesh (see Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 307). But the evidence for "banshees " and " doubles " is too scanty to justify insistence on this view, and we shall presently find that the agency of disembodied spirits is more often suggested.