“At the breakfast-table, I said to the old lady with whom I boarded, ‘Rosa is dead.’  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she inquired.  ’You told me she seemed better than common when you called to see her yesterday.’  I related the occurrences of the morning, and told her I had a strong impression Rosa was dead.  She laughed, and said I had dreamed it all.  I assured her I was thoroughly awake, and in proof thereof told her I had heard all the customary household noises, and had counted the clock when it struck five.  She replied, ’All that is very possible, my dear.  The clock struck into your dream.  Real sounds often mix with the illusions of sleep.  I am surprised that a dream should make such an impression on a young lady so free from superstition as you are.’  She continued to jest on the subject, and slightly annoyed me by her persistence in believing it a dream, when I was perfectly sure of having been wide awake.  To settle the question, I summoned a messenger and sent him to inquire how Rosa did.  He returned with the answer that she died that morning at five o’clock.”

I wrote the story as Miss Hosmer told it to me, and after I had shown it to her, I asked if she had any objection, to its being published, without suppression of names.  She replied, “You have reported the story of Rosa correctly.  Make what use you please of it.  You cannot think it more interesting, or unaccountable, than I do myself.”

A remarkable instance of communication between spirits at the moment of death is recorded in the Life of the Rev. Joseph S. Buckminster, written by his sister.  When he was dying in Boston, their father was dying in Vermont, ignorant of his son’s illness.  Early in the morning, he said to his wife, “My son Joseph is dead.”  She told him he had been dreaming.  He calmly replied, “I have not slept, nor dreamed.  He is dead.”  When letters arrived from Boston, they announced that the spirit of the son had departed from his body the same night that the father received an impression of it.

Such incidents suggest curious psychological inquiries, which I think have attracted less attention than they deserve.  It is common to explain all such phenomena as “optical illusions” produced by “disordered nerves.”  But is that any explanation? How do certain states of the nerves produce visions as distinct as material forms?  In the two cases I have mentioned, there was no disorder of the nerves, no derangement of health, no disquietude of mind.  Similar accounts come to us from all nations, and from the remotest periods of time; and I doubt whether there ever was a universal superstition that had not some great, unchangeable truth for its basis.  Some secret laws of our being are wrapt up in these occasional mysteries, and in the course of the world’s progress we may perhaps become familiar with the explanation, and find genuine philosophy under the mask of superstition.  When any well-authenticated incidents of this kind are related, it is a very common