and the machine, was a full-sized figure of myself from the waist
upwards. The image was lower than myself, but clear enough, with brown
hair and eyes. How earnestly the eyes regarded me; how thoughtfully! I
laughed and nodded at the image, but still it gazed earnestly at me. At
its neck was a bright red bow, coming unpinned. Its white linen collar
was turned up at the right-hand corner.

"When I got down to dinner I told my brother George I had seen Pepper's
Ghost, and it was a distinct image of myself, clear enough, and yet I
could see the wall and the side of the machine through the image, and
George said, 'Had it a red bow and white collar on?' 'Oh, yes,' I said.
'It was just like me, only nicer, and when I laughed and nodded, it
looked grave.' 'Very likely,' said George. 'It would think you very
silly. And was its bow coming unpinned?' 'Yes,' I replied; 'and the
right point of its collar was turned up.' He reached me a hand-mirror,
and I saw that my bow was coming unpinned and the right point of my
collar was turned up. So it could not have been a reflection, or it
would not have been the right point, but the left of my collar that was
turned up."

_The Wraith as a Portent._

In the North country it is of popular belief that to see the ghost of a
living man portends his approaching decease. The Rev. Henry Kendall, of
Darlington, from whose diary (unpublished) I have the liberty to quote,
notes the following illustration of this belief, under date August 16th,
1870:--

"Mrs. W. mentioned a curious incident that happened in Darlington: how
Mrs. Percy, upholsterer, and known to several of us, was walking along
the street one day when her husband was living, and she saw him walking
a little way before her; then he left the causeway and turned in at a
public-house. When she spoke to him of this, he said he had not been
near the place, and she was so little satisfied with his statement that
she called in at the 'public,' and asked them if her husband had been
there, but they told her 'No.' In a very short period after this
happened he died."

The phenomenon of a dual body haunted the imagination of poor Shelley.
Shortly before his death he believed he had seen his wraith:--

"On the 23rd of June," says one of his biographers, "he was heard
screaming at midnight in the saloon. The Williamses ran in and found him
staring on vacancy. He had had a vision of a cloaked figure which came
to his bedside and beckoned hi