have been in the
same precise circumstances as at the present instant, once or many times
before_.

O, dear, yes!--said one of the company,--everybody has had that feeling.

The landlady didn't know anything about such notions; it was an idee in
folks' heads, she expected.

The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of way, that she knew the
feeling well, and didn't like to experience it; it made her think she
was a ghost, sometimes.

The young fellow whom they call John said he knew all about it; he had
just lighted a cheroot the other day, when a tremendous conviction all
at once came over him that he had done just that same thing ever so many
times before. I looked severely at him, and his countenance immediately
fell--_on the side toward me;_ I cannot answer for the other, for he can
wink and laugh with either half of his face without the other half's
knowing it.

----I have noticed--I went on to say--the following circumstances
connected with these sudden impressions. First, that the condition which
seems to be the duplicate of a former one is often very trivial,--one
that might have presented itself a hundred times. Secondly, that the
impression is very evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled
by any voluntary effort, at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly,
that there is a disinclination to record the circumstances, and a sense
of incapacity to reproduce the state of mind in words. Fourthly, I have
often felt that the duplicate condition had not only occurred once
before, but that it was familiar, and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I
have had the same convictions in my dreams.

How do I account for it?--Why, there are several ways that I can
mention, and you may take your choice. The first is that which the
young lady hinted at;--that these flashes are sudden recollections of a
previous existence. I don't believe that; for I remember a poor student
I used to know told me he had such a conviction one day when he was
blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever lived in another world
where they use Day and Martin.

Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's being a double
organ, its hemispheres working together like the two eyes, accounts
for it. One of the hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the small
interval between the perceptions of the nimble and the sluggish half
seems an indefinitely long period, and therefore the second perception
appears to be the copy of