could see me when she was several miles off, she saw, not me, but
a different friend of mine on each occasion, whom she had never seen,
but whom she immediately identified on seeing them afterwards at my
office.

Crystal-gazing seems to be the least dangerous and most simple of all
methods of experimenting. You simply look into a crystal globe the size
of a five-shilling piece, or a water-bottle which is full of clear
water, and is placed so that too much light does not fall upon it, and
then simply look at it. You make no incantations and engage in no
mumbo-jumbo business; you simply look at it for two or three minutes,
taking care not to tire yourself, winking as much as you please, but
fixing your thought upon whoever it is you wish to see. Then, if you
have the faculty, the glass will cloud over with a milky mist, and in
the centre the image is gradually precipitated in just the same way as a
photograph forms on the sensitive plate. At least, the description given
by crystal-gazers as to the way in which the picture appears reminded me
of nothing so much as what I saw when I stood inside the largest camera
in the world, in which the Ordnance Survey photographs its maps at
Southampton.

PART IV.

PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT.

"But there are many such things in Nature, though we have not the right
key to them. We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an
atmosphere of which we do not know what is stirring in it, or how it is
connected with our own spirit. So much is certain--that in particular
cases we can put out the feelers of our soul beyond its bodily limits,
and that a presentiment, nay, an actual insight into, the immediate
future is accorded to it."--Goethe's "Conversations with Eckermann."

Chapter I.

My Own Extraordinary Premonitions.

If clairvoyance partakes of the nature of the camera obscura, by which
persons can see at a distance that which is going on beyond the direct
range of their vision, it is less easy to suggest an analogy to explain
the phenomena of premonition or second sight. Although I have never seen
a ghost--for none of my hallucinations are scenic--I may fairly claim to
have a place in this census on the ground of the extraordinary
premonitions I have had at various times of coming events. The second
sight of the Highlander is always scenic; he does not hear so much as he
sees. If death is foreshadowed, the circumstances preceding and
following the event pass