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SPIRITS.

“Did you ever see a ghost?” said a gentleman to his friend.

“No, but I once came very nigh seeing one,” was the facetious reply.

The writer of this article has had still better luck,—­having twice come very nigh seeing a ghost.  In other words, two friends, in whose veracity and healthy clearness of vision I have perfect confidence, have assured me that they have distinctly seen a disembodied spirit.

If I had permission to do so, I would record the street in Boston, and the number of the house, where the first of these two apparitions was seen; but that would be unpleasant to parties concerned.  Years ago, the lady who witnessed it told me the particulars, and I have recently heard her repeat them.  A cousin, with whom her relations were as intimate as with a brother, was in the last stages of consumption.  One morning, when she carried him her customary offering of fruit or flowers, she found him unusually bright, his cheeks flushed, his eyes brilliant, and his state of mind exceedingly cheerful.  He talked of his recovery and future plans in life with hopefulness almost amounting to certainty.  This made her somewhat sad, for she regarded it as a delusion of his flattering disease, a flaring up of the life-candle before it sank in the socket.  She thus reported the case, when she returned home.  In the afternoon she was sewing as usual, surrounded by her mother and sisters, and listening to one who was reading aloud.  While thus occupied, she chanced to raise her eyes from her work and glance to the opposite corner of the room.  Her mother, seeing her give a sudden start, exclaimed, “What is the matter?” She pointed to the corner of the room and replied, “There is Cousin ------!” They all told her she had been dreaming, and was only half wakened.  She assured them she had not even been drowsy; and she repeated with great earnestness, “There is Cousin ------, just as I saw him this morning.  Don’t you see him?” She could not measure the time that the vision remained; but it was long enough for several questions and answers to pass rapidly between herself and other members of the family.  In reply to their persistent incredulity, she said, “It is very strange that you don’t see him; for I see him as plainly as I do any of you.”  She was so obviously awake and in her right mind, that the incident naturally made an impression on those who listened to her.  Her mother looked at her watch, and despatched a messenger to inquire how Cousin ------ did.  Word was soon brought that he died at the same moment he had appeared in the house of his relatives.  The lady who had this singular experience is too sensible and well-informed to be superstitious.  She was not afflicted with any disorder of the nerves, and was in good health at the time.

To my other story I can give “a local habitation and a name” well known.  When Harriet Hosmer, the sculptor, visited her native country a few years ago, I had an interview with her, during which our conversation happened to turn upon dreams and visions.