(242) "In the month of August, 1864, about 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I was sitting reading in the verandah of our house in Barbadoes. My black nurse was driving my little girl, about 18 months or so old, in her perambulator in the garden. I got up after some time to go into the house, not having noticed anything at all - when this black woman said to me, ' Missis, who was that gentleman that was talking to you just now?' 'There was no one talking to me,' I said. 'Oh, yes, dere was, Missis - a very pale gentleman, very tall, and he talked to you, and you was very rude, for you never answered him.' I repeated there was no one, and got rather cross with the woman, and she begged me to write down the day, for she knew she had seen someone. I did, and in a few days I heard of the death of my brother in Tobago. Now, the curious part is this, that I did not see him, but she - a stranger to him - did; and she said that he seemed very anxious for me to notice him. "MAY Clerke".

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Clerke says: -

"(1) The day of death was the same, for I wrote it down. I think it was the 3rd of August, but I know it was the same.

"(2) The description, 'very tall and pale,' was accurate.

"(3) I had no idea that he was ill. He was only a few days ill.

"(4) The woman had never seen him. She had been with me for about 18 months, and I considered her truthful. She had no object in telling me".

In conversation, I learned that Mrs. Clerke had immediately mentioned what the servant said, and the fact that she had written down the date, to her husband, Colonel Clerke, who corroborates as follows: -

"I well remember that on the day on which Mr. John Beresford, my wife's brother, died in Tobago - after a short illness of which we were not aware - our black nurse declared she saw, at as nearly as possible the time of his death, a gentleman, exactly answering to Mr. Beresford's description, leaning over the back of Mrs. Clerke's easy-chair in the open verandah. The figure was not seen by any one else. "Shadwell H. Clerke".

We find it stated in Burke's Peerage that Mr. J. H. de la Poer Beresford, Secretary for the Island of Tobago, died on August 3, 1863 (not 1864).

If this incident is to be interpreted telepathically, it is scarcely possible to suppose that Mrs. Clerke's own presence did not play a part in the phenomenon. The case would then be comparable to some of the "collective" cases (to be cited in Chapter XVIII (Collective Telepathy Cases)), where one of the percipients is a stranger to the agent; the difference being that here the person who should (so to speak) have been the principal percipient was as unconscious of the impression which she received as we have found the percipient to be in some of the experimental cases.1 Another instance of the same kind is No. 355 (p. 510, and see p. 515).

1As one more example of the psychological identity of hallucinations and dreams Chap. xii, § 5), I may quote an account of a dream which is an exact parallel to the above waking case.

In the last week of February, 1885, Miss Harris, of 9, Queen Square, Bloomsbury, W.C., wrote to us as follows: -

"On Thursday night, the 19th of February, 1885,1 dreamed the following dream. A servant, a Lincolnshire woman, has lived in our house for two years; and of her, whom I never see in the day, I dreamt, as portentously as if her troubles were my own. There is nothing remarkable in this young woman's character or experience. She is but an ordinary rather rough specimen of a village girl, quiet and respectable.

"In my dream a long country lane was before me; in this I walked with the Lincolnshire cook, without speaking; yet I knew that my companion was going with me as a sort of escort to some errand of my own. Then a face appeared over the hedge, a solemn, silent face, exactly resembling that of the one who noiselessly moved beside me; the sternest suffering was impressed upon the plain hard-lined countenance From beside me the country servant instantly departed to follow the warning voiceless form through the hedge, into a little house. Only a long minute passed, and the servant rushed from the hedge, absolutely wringing her hands, crouching to the ground in dumb agony. "Tis my sister called me, she beckoned me in; but she will not speak: she will not have me with her.' As she spoke the vision returned. It looked over the low hedge, with the same indescribable expression of sadness unspeakable - of a terrible woo impossible of utterance. It flung back its sleeve, and, lifting one arm, pointed to a single white spot in the centre of a finger. And as suddenly as I had fallen on this dream, so suddenly I awoke. I tried to cast off the shadow the dream had cast on me.

But the same evening came the news that the country cook's sister was very ill, and had prematurely been confined with a child born dead. "Emily Marion Harris".

In answer to inquiries, Miss Harris adds: -

"Certainly I repeated my dream even before I left my room. I asked the housemaid whether she knew of any reason her fellow-servant might have to fear, or to hear bad news. She said, 'No,' and after that I told my sister. Nothing was said about the dream during Friday. On Saturday morning, when I returned from a class - having dismissed the occurrence from my mind for the time - my sister immediately told me that the coincidence of dream and fact were marvellously similar. The poor woman whom I saw with such dumb appeal on her countenance, was alone, unable to speak, meeting her trouble alone, her husband, who is a policeman, being on night duty. She thought it was impossible to be heard, till she found a stick of his, and contrived to knock on the floor".

Miss Harris's sister corroborates as follows: - "March 16th 1885.

"It was directly I came out of my room, before I went downstairs, that my sister told me the dream she wrote to you about, and which she had dreamed between night and morning. "Clara de H. Harris".