“Circumstances, in the year 1848,” writes a correspondent of the Editor, “induced me to allow my youngest daughter to leave England, in order to join a son of mine in Australia, who had left home about five years previously, to seek his fortune in that country. In England, at home, he had every opportunity of making his way in life, and settling advantageously, but had availed himself of none that had offered. After leaving school, he was placed under a private tutor’s care, and duly entered at Oxford. There he did nothing, or next to nothing, and left without taking any degree. Soon after this, at his own suggestion, in company with a friend, whose acquaintance he had made at the university, an acquaintance which eventually ripened into a warm friendship, he went to Australia; and he did not go empty-handed. A sum of money was placed to his credit with a colonial bank in the city of London having agencies in that colony, and nothing was left undone to secure for him a good start in his self-chosen and new life. I ought to add here that my own wish always had been that he should remain at home, and, after receiving orders, become vicar of a parish, the patronage of which was in the gift of a relation. Man proposes, but God disposes.
“In Australia, as was not otherwise than I myself had anticipated, the manner of life was utterly unlike that to which he had been accustomed. Ill-luck and want of success met him at every turn, as we afterwards found out; and not only did want of success meet him, but he had to undergo privations and hardships, which eventually weakened a constitution never too strong.
“At the time that I consented to my daughter going out, much of the above was unknown to us. He had written complaining of ill-health and weakness, and she, with great self-denial and sisterly devotion, resolved to go. She went with the understanding that she was soon to return. Just before she started, the mail brought us unexceptionally bad news of her brother’s weak state of health, written by his college friend.
“About six weeks after her departure, I was sitting musing in my arm-chair, on a summer afternoon, close to the window of my library, which looked out upon a lawn, to the left of which were three large and overspreading cedar-trees. All of a sudden I saw the life-like apparition of my son standing below the cedar-trees. He looked very pale, thin, and careworn, much altered, but my very son. He gazed at me intently, and with a mournful gaze, for about the space of two minutes. I could not speak—I could not move—I could not take my eyes off him. I seemed riveted to the spot; and, of course, I was at once convinced of the fact that he had died. Then he seemed gradually to fade away. It was weeks before I could get the thoughts of his appearance out of my mind; and nothing that the members of my family could say served to remove the impression so indelibly stamped upon it of our loss.
“Some months afterwards, we received letters from my daughter (just landed) and his other friends in Australia announcing his decease. He had died somewhat suddenly, having expressed the most anxious desire to see me before his death—a desire repeated again and again, and regarding which he seemed to be unquiet.
“The most remarkable feature yet to be told in the circumstance was this,—that my daughter, who was reposing in the ladies’ cabin of the ship, on her way to Australia, saw the apparition of her brother come into the cabin, move round it by a strange motion, and then, after looking at herself with a strained and mournful look, glide out again.
“Events afterwards showed that these appearances, both on shipboard and at my own home, occurred at or about the very time of my dear boy’s death. And nothing will convince me that the record here set down is not one of the most remarkable and undoubted examples of supernatural apparitions. May God Almighty join us all together again, after these earthly separations, in His heavenly kingdom!”
The following example, which has already appeared in print, is authenticated by a personal acquaintance of the Editor, who has kindly written him a Letter on the subject. It was first given to Dr. William Gregory,[17] who published it about twenty-three years ago. It is said to have occurred in 1849:[18]—
“An officer occupied the same room with another officer in the West Indies. One night he awoke his companion, and asked him if he saw anything in the room, when the latter answered that he saw an old man in the corner whom he did not know. ‘That,’ said the other, ‘is my father, and I am sure he is dead.’ In due time news arrived of his death in England at that very time. Long afterwards the officer took his friend who had seen the vision to visit the widow, when, on entering the room, he started, and said, ‘That is the portrait of the old man I saw.’ It was, in fact, the portrait of the father, whom the friend had never seen except in the vision.”
“This story,” writes Dr. Gregory, “I have on the best authority; and everyone knows that such stories are not uncommon. It is very easy, but not satisfactory, to laugh at them as incredible ghost stories; but there is a natural truth in them, whatever they may be.”