IN spite of the testimony of many worthy and some unworthy people, I have not yet been able to accept spiritual manifestations and the reappearance of the dead as even remotely probable. I think most of the current ghost stories are capable of a simple explanation, if one could only get an unvarnished statement of real facts from the witnesses. Usually, however, those on whose authority these stories rest, are constitutionally of such a nervous organisation that they are physically incapable of describing with exact accuracy what they saw or heard. When, as not infrequently happens, those who have seen visions admit to having felt that extremity of fear which bathes them in a cold perspiration, or makes their hair rise up straight on their heads (this last is not, I think, alleged by women), then there is all the more reason to doubt their testimony. Undoubtedly curious things happen which do not admit of easy explanation, but they are not necessarily supernatural, or connected in any way with the return of the dead to the sight of the living. Dreams, again, are sometimes very curious, and it might be difficult to offer a reasonable explanation of some dream-experiences, especially those which lead to the backing of winning horses or the purchase of prize-tickets in a lottery. A really reliable dreamer of this kind would be a valuable investment; but, unfortunately, there is a want of certainty about even those who have, once in a lifetime, brought off a successful coup. Still, it has happened. I myself have heard a dreamer—who was also a dream-talker—place accurately the three first horses in a coming race; but I had not sufficient confidence in the “tip” to take advantage of it. In that case, too, the winner was a very pronounced favourite. Many people say they have dreamt of strange places, and afterwards seen those places in reality, and even been able to find their way about in them. It may be so. For myself, I cannot say I have ever had such an experience, but I believe (I say it doubtfully, because one may be deceived about journeys in dreamland) that I have often seen the same places in different dreams, dreamed after intervals of years, so that, while dreaming, I have at once recognised the place as a familiar scene in my dreamland. But those places I have never beheld on earth. In my early youth, scared by tales of the bottomless pit and the lake of brimstone, I used to dream, almost nightly, of those places of torment; but it is a long time ago, and I have quite forgotten what they were like. I have no ambition to renew my acquaintance, or to be given the opportunity of comparing the reality with the nightmare of my childish imagination and a cramped position. Apart from these more or less vain considerations, I have known some very curious coincidences, and I will tell you the story of one of them.

I was journeying in a strange, a distant, and an almost unknown land. More than this, I was the guest of the only white man in a remote district of that country. It was a particularly lovely spot, and, being an idler for the moment, I asked my host, after a few days, what there was of interest that I could go and see. He said he would send a servant with me to show me a cemetery, where were buried a number of Englishmen who, some few years before, had been killed or died in the neighbourhood, during the progress of one of England’s successful little military expeditions. That afternoon I was led to the cemetery in question. I have seldom seen a more glorious succession of pictures than were presented by the view from that lovely spot; and never in any country have I beheld a more ideal resting-place for the honoured dead. It did not surprise me that my host told me he had already selected his own corner, and repeatedly made it the objective of his afternoon walks. Within a fenced enclosure, partly surrounded by graceful, ever-green trees, lay the small plot of carefully kept grass which formed the burial-ground. It occupied the summit of a rising ground commanding a magnificent view of the surrounding country. From the gate the ground sloped steeply down to a road, and then dropped sheer forty or fifty feet to the waters of a great, wide, crystal-clear river, flowing over a bed of golden sand. Under this steep and lofty bank, the base all rock, the river swirled deep and green; but it rapidly shallowed towards the centre, and the opposite shore, seven hundred feet distant, was a wide expanse of sand, half-circled by great groves of palms, and backed by steep, forest-clad hills. The river made a wide sweep here, so that, looking down on it from such a height gave it rather the appearance of a huge lake narrowing into the distant hills. Picturesque villages lined both banks of the river, the houses showing splashes of colour between the trees. Boats of quaint build—sailing, poling, paddling, rowing—passed up and down the broad stream, giving life to the scene; while at distances varying from three miles to thirty or more, the valley was shut in by lofty mountains, green near by, with their garment of unbroken forest, but, in the distance, blue as an Italian sky. I drank this in, felt it all as a feeling, this and much more with which I will not weary you, and then I turned to look at the grass-covered mounds and wooden crosses that marked the graves of the exiled dead. I was standing in front of a somewhat more pretentious headstone, which marked the resting-place of an officer killed a few miles from this spot, when, through the wicket, came a messenger bearing a letter for me. The cover bore many post-marks, signs of a long chase, and here at last it had caught me in my wanderings. I did not recognise the handwriting, but when I had opened the letter and looked at the signature, I realised that it was that of an old lady who was but an acquaintance, and one of whom I had not heard for years. I read the letter, and I may confess to some little astonishment. It told me that, hearing that I was leaving England for a long journey, and that I should eventually arrive at somewhere in the East, the writer wished to tell me that her daughter (whom I hardly remembered) had married a certain soldier, that he had been killed some time before, and was buried in some place (which she tried indifferently to name) where there were no Europeans. If I should ever be in the neighbourhood, would I try to find his grave, and tell them something about it; for they were in great grief, and no one could relieve their anxiety on the subject of their loved one’s last home.

It seemed to me a somewhat remarkable coincidence that I should, at that moment, be standing in front of the stone which told me that, underneath that emerald turf, lay all that was left of the poor lady’s son-in-law, the grief-stricken daughter’s husband. The situation appealed to my artistic instincts. I sat down, there and then, and, with a pencil and a bit of paper, I made a rough sketch of the soldier’s grave; carefully drawing the headstone, and inscribing on it, in very plain and very black print, the legend that I saw in front of me. Then I went home, and, while the situation was hot upon me, I wrote, not to the mother, but to the widow, a little account of what had occurred, using the most appropriate and touching language I could think of, to describe the scene and my deep sympathy. Finally I enclosed the little picture, which I had drawn with such a compelling sense of my responsibilities, and the unique character of the opportunity, to show that I was a man of rather uncommon feeling. Much pleased with the result of my efforts, I entrusted the letter to my friend (there was no such thing as a post-office), and we became almost sentimental over the chastened tears with which my letter would be read by the two poor ladies.

The mother’s letter to me had wandered about for two or three months before it came to my hands; but I learned,—ages afterwards,—that my letter to the daughter was a far longer time in transit; not the fault of my friend, but simply of the general unhingedness of things in those wild places.

The letter did at last arrive, and was handed to the widow on the day she was married to a new husband. That is why I believe in the quaintness of coincidences.