PARTIAL TRANSCRIPTION:

Narration: Part 1

April 4th, 1888.

Your letter to the Telegraph of March 27th, brought to my memory an incident that occurred to me some years since–in fact, in 1866. I might preface my statement by saying that I am not in the least superstitious.

For some years previous to 1866 I had been residing in B– as agent for a large firm in London. Soon after my arrival in B–, I took apartments in the suburbs, in a house kept by two sisters, one a maiden lady, the other a widow with two daughters. To make a long story short, I fell in love with the youngest daughter, proposed and was accepted, although her mother always was very much opposed to it. Time passed on and I heard of a much better appointment. I threw up the one I had and came to London to secure the other, without telling anyone in B—anything about it. I had been in London about five weeks, when, one Sunday evening, feeling irritable and dull, I retired to rest, much earlier than usual. I had been in bed some time trying to court sleep, when suddenly at one end of the room there appeared two figures, and as they developed one was my fiance, the other the man whom I had always looked on as my greatest friend and “chum” in B–. There was the room—my room–the fireplace, and every particular true to the original, and the attitude of the two–he holding her hand, and her troubled look left no doubt in my mind that he was proposing to her. No sooner had I grasped the circumstances of the case than the vision melted and was gone; and now comes what I consider the remarkable part. On the following Tuesday I had a letter from the young lady’s brother, informing me that her mother had prevailed on her to break off her engagement with me, and one from the young lady herself returning all my presents, and stating that her mother had forbidden her to correspond with me further; and in less than a month I heard from a mutual friend in B- – that the young lady was engaged to the man I had seen in the vision.