"Don't you remember my hands? I was so proud of my hands!"
Now, as a matter of fact, my friend was noted for her beautiful hands, but she was too sensible and clever a woman to have been conceited about them, and had too much good taste ever to have made their beauty a subject of remark, even to an intimate friend.
Moreover, the hands now en évidence, although well shaped and with tapering fingers, were as little identical with a human hand as the face was identical with a human face.
Casting about for something to say to her, my first thought was for an only and dearly loved married sister of hers, also a friend of mine, and I mentioned the latter in a guarded way, saying: "If you are in reality my friend, have you no message for your sister?"
In a moment, and without the slightest hesitation, she said: "Tell poor Jessie," going on with a message peculiarly appropriate to the facts of the case, but of much too private a nature for publication.
Almost immediately afterwards, and with no shadow of suggestion from me, she added:
"Poor Jessie! She suffered terribly when I passed away so suddenly."
My friend had died in a foreign country, under peculiarly sad circumstances. She was young, beautiful, and accomplished; a prominent local figure in the well-known capital where she had spent several winters. Her death was so sudden that there was not even time to put off a large afternoon "At Home" arranged for that day. Moreover, this sister, by a most merciful chance, happened to be spending a few months with her, out of England, at the time. These were all special facts, spontaneously referred to by her, but which would not have applied equally well to the death of any other friend, even supposing such a death to have occurred abroad.
The spirit spoke feebly and with difficulty, "not having much strength," she told me.
I asked if her father (who had died a few months previously) were with her.