Well, I took a drink and then I said to myself, I said, “See here, I’m going to see this thing through.”  So I turned back and walked straight upstairs again to my room.  I fully expected something queer was going to happen and was prepared for it.  But do you know when I walked into the room again the feeling, or presentiment, or whatever it was I had had, was absolutely gone.  There was my book lying just where I had left it and the reading lamp still burning on the table, just as it had been, and my chair just where I had pushed it back.  But I felt nothing, absolutely nothing.  I sat and waited awhile, but I still felt nothing.

I went downstairs again to put out the lights in the dining-room.  I noticed as I passed the sideboard that I was still shaking a little.  So I took a small drink of whisky—­though as a rule I never care to take more than one drink—­unless when I am sitting talking as we are here.

Well, I had hardly taken it when I felt an odd sort of psychic feeling—­a sort of drowsiness.  I remember, in a dim way, going to bed, and then I remember nothing till I woke up next morning.

And here’s the strange part of it.  I had hardly got down to the office after breakfast when I got a wire to tell me that my mother-in-law had broken her arm in Cincinnati.  Strange, wasn’t it?  No, not at half-past two during that night—­that’s the inexplicable part of it.  She had broken it at half-past eleven the morning before.  But you notice it was half-past in each case.  That’s the queer way these things go.

Of course, I don’t pretend to explain it.  I suppose it simply means that I am telepathic—­that’s all.  I imagine that, if I wanted to, I could talk with the dead and all that kind of thing.  But I feel somehow that I don’t want to.

Eh?  Thank you, I will—­though I seldom take more than—­ thanks, thanks, that’s plenty of soda in it.

(III)

The familiar narrative in which the Successful Business Man recounts the early struggles by which he made good.

...No, sir, I had no early advantages whatever.  I was brought up plain and hard—­try one of these cigars; they cost me fifty cents each.  In fact, I practically had no schooling at all.  When I left school I didn’t know how to read, not to read good.  It’s only since I’ve been in business that I’ve learned to write English, that is so as to use it right.  But I’ll guarantee to say there isn’t a man in the shoe business to-day can write a better letter than I can.  But all that I know is what I’ve learned myself.  Why, I can’t do fractions even now.  I don’t see that a man need.  And I never learned no geography, except what I got for myself off railroad folders.  I don’t believe a man needs more than that anyway.  I’ve got my boy at Harvard now.  His mother was set on it.  But I don’t see that he learns anything, or nothing that will help him any in business.  They say they learn them character and manners in the colleges, but, as I see it, a man can get all that just as well in business—­is that wine all right?  If not, tell me and I’ll give the head waiter hell; they charge enough for it; what you’re drinking costs me four-fifty a bottle.