ses the illustration of
grain sown, and we know that the grain which grows is not the same with
what is sown[303]. You cannot suppose that we shall rise with a diseased
body; it is enough if there be such a sameness as to distinguish
identity of person.' She seemed desirous of knowing more, but he left
the question in obscurity.

Of apparitions[304], he observed, 'A total disbelief of them is adverse
to the opinion of the existence of the soul between death and the last
day; the question simply is, whether departed spirits ever have the
power of making themselves perceptible to us; a man who thinks he has
seen an apparition, can only be convinced himself; his authority will
not convince another, and his conviction, if rational, must be founded
on being told something which cannot be known but by supernatural means.'

He mentioned a thing as not unfrequent, of which I had never heard
before,--being _called_, that is, hearing one's name pronounced by the
voice of a known person at a great distance, far beyond the possibility
of being reached by any sound uttered by human organs. 'An acquaintance,
on whose veracity I can depend, told me, that walking home one evening
to Kilmarnock, he heard himself called from a wood, by the voice of a
brother who had gone to America; and the next packet brought accounts of
that brother's death.' Macbean[305] asserted that this inexplicable
_calling_ was a thing very well known. Dr. Johnson said, that one day at
Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother
distinctly call Sam. She was then at Lichfield; but nothing ensued[306].
This phaenomenon is, I think, as wonderful as any other mysterious
fact, which many people are very slow to believe, or rather, indeed,
reject with an obstinate contempt.

Some time after this, upon his making a remark which escaped my
attention, Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Hall were both together striving to
answer him. He grew angry, and called out loudly, 'Nay, when you both
speak at once, it is intolerable.' But checking himself, and softening,
he said, 'This one may say, though you _are_ ladies.' Then he brightened
into gay humour, and addressed them in the words of one of the songs in
_The Beggar's Opera_[307]:--

'But two at a time there's no mortal can bear.'

'What, Sir, (said I,) are you going to turn Captain Macheath?' There was
something as pleasantly ludicrous in this scene as can be imagined. The
contrast between Macheath,