It was like a thunder-stroke.—I instantly slipped my hand into my pocket, and hastily gave her three from a five-shilling piece.
‘Thanks, my bonny one,’ said the woman, and setting up a shout of contemptuous laughter she bounded down Caroline-street towards Russell-street, singing, or rather yelling a wild air.
Ellis did not speak during this scene—he pressed my arm tightly, and we quickened our pace. We said nothing to each other till we turned into Bedford-street, and the lights and passengers of Tottenham-court-road re-assured us.
‘What do you think of that?’ said Ellis to me.
‘Seeing is believing,’ was my reply.
I have never passed that dark corner of Bedford-square in the evening since.
REMARKABLE FULFILMENT OF A PREDICTION.
A certain German author relates the following:
In my younger days, there was a dinner given in the Florenburg Westphalen, where I was born, on the occasion of a baptism to which a clergyman was invited. During dinner, the conversation turned upon the gravedigger of the place, who was well known on account of his second-sight; for, as often as he saw a corpse, he was always telling that there would be a funeral from such and such a house. Now, as the event invariably took place, the inhabitants of the house he indicated were placed by the man’s tale in the greatest anxiety.
This man’s prophecying was an abomination to the clergyman. He therefore forbade him, but all to no purpose; for the poor dolt, although he was a drunkard, and a man of low and vulgar sentiments, believed firmly that it was a prophetic gift of God, and that he must make it known, in order that the people might still repent. At length the clergyman gave him notice that, if he announced one funeral more, he should be deprived of his place, and expelled from the village. This availed—the gravedigger was silent from that time forward. Half a year afterward, in the autumn of 1745, the gravedigger came to the clergyman, and said to him: ‘Sir, you have forbidden me to announce any more funerals, and I have not done so since, nor will I do it any more; but I must tell you something that is particularly remarkable, that you may see that my second sight is really true. In a few weeks a corpse will be brought up the meadow, which will be drawn on a sledge by an ox.’ The clergyman seemingly paid no attention to this, but listened to it with indifference, and replied: ‘Only go about your business, and leave off such superstitious follies. It is sinful to have anything to do with them.’