304 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



house, but was more than surprised to find, on Mr. A.'s return home, 

 that he had not been near the house on the occasion referred to. 

 Some days thereafter, on entering the drawing-room which she had 

 left a few minutes before, she saw Mr. A. standing with his back to 

 the fire. On asking him why he had returned so soon from his walk, 

 the figure looked fixedly at her, but did not speak. Thereupon, 

 thinking her husband involved in thought, she sat down in an arm- 

 chair close by, with the remark, " Why don't you speak? " Thereupon 

 the figure passed towards a window at the farther end of the room, 

 still gazing upon her, and in its progress she remarked that she heard 

 no noise of footsteps or any other of the usual sounds made in pro- 

 gression. She was now convinced that she was gazing upon a spec- 

 tral illusion. The figure soon disappeared, but while it remained 

 before her it appeared to conceal the objects before which it stood. 

 Similar illusions were noted by Mrs. A. in the case of the cat, which she 

 imagined she saw in the drawing-room, but which was at that parti- 

 cular moment in the housekeeper's apartment. Her husband was 

 witness of the latter incident. Amongst the other figures which ap- 

 peared to this lady was that of a female relative who was at the 

 period in question in Scotland in perfect health, but whose image 

 appeared enveloped in grave-clothes, and in the ghastly appearance 

 of death. And on another occasion, when alone in her bedroom, 

 and in the act of repeating a passage from the " Edinburgh Review " 

 which had captivated her notice and memory, she beheld seated in 

 an arm-chair a deceased sister-in-law. The figure was clad in a 

 gown of a peculiar pattern which had been vividly described to her 

 by a friend who had seen the deceased lady wear it. Here a domi- 

 nant idea that of the description of the dress had probably lent 

 its aid to increase the realism of, or even to produce, this particular 

 phantom. In the case of another illusion, the figure of a second 

 deceased friend sat down in a chair opposite Mrs. A., on an occasion 

 when several other persons were in the room. Mrs. A. was afraid 

 lest the fact of her staring persistently at what to her visitors would 

 appear empty space should be noticed ; and " under the influence of 

 this fear," says Sir David Brewster, and recollecting that Sir Walter 

 Scott in his " Demonology " had mentioned such a procedure, " she 

 summoned up the requisite resolution to enable her to cross the 

 space before the fireplace, and seat herself in the same chair with the 

 figure. The apparition remained perfectly distinct till she sat down, 

 as it were, in its lap, when it vanished." 



The case of Mrs. A. presents some noteworthy resemblances to 

 that of Nicolai. She was a person of imaginative disposition, and 

 she was in feeble health at the period when the illusions appeared. 

 Her strong common-sense, aided, as Sir David Brewster tells us, by 

 a perusal of Dr. Hibbert's famous work on the " Philosophy of Appari- 



