4 i4 MY LIFE 



my disappointments in obtaining employment and to my money 

 losses, always urging me not to trouble myself about my 

 affairs, which would certainly improve ; but T was not to be 

 in a hurry. These messages never contained any proofs of 

 identity, and I did not therefore feel much interest in them, 

 and their ultimate fulfillment, though in quite unexpected 

 ways, cannot be considered to be of any great importance. 



Some years later, when we were living at Dorking, my 

 little boy, then five years old, became very delicate, and seemed 

 pining away without any perceptible ailment. At that time 

 I was being treated myself for a chronic complaint by 

 an American medium, in whom I had much confidence ; and 

 one day, when in his usual trance, he told me, without any 

 inquiry on my part, that the boy was in danger, and that if 

 we wished to save him we must leave Dorking, go to a more 

 bracing place, and let him be out-of-doors as much as possible 

 and " have the smell of the earth." I then noticed that we 

 were all rather languid without knowing why, and therefore 

 removed in the spring to Croydon, where we all felt stronger, 

 and the boy at once began to get better and has had fair health 

 ever since. 



Some time afterwards I accompanied a lady friend of mine 

 to have a seance with the same medium, she being quite un- 

 known to him. Among many other interesting things, he 

 told us that something would happen before very long which 

 would cause us to see less of each other, but would not affect 

 our friendship. We neither of us could guess what that could 

 be, but a year or two later the lady married a very old friend, 

 a widower, whose wife at the time of the prediction was, I 

 think, alive, while he was living in a distant colony without 

 any expressed intention of coming home. After the marriage 

 they went to live in Devonshire, and for some years we only 

 met at very long intervals. These two cases seem to me to 

 be genuine clairvoyance or prediction. 



But much more important than the preceding are certain 

 predictions which were made to me in April, 1896, and which 

 have been fulfilled during the succeeding eight years. At 



