In 1879 I had a similar experience in my own case.  I was travelling in Scotland, and in Edinburgh I met some friends and inquired for an old lady whom I had known as a child.  I found that she was living at a place called Aberladye, on the seacoast.  I decided to go to see her, and was directed to take the train to Dreme Station, and there I should find a conveyance to take me to Aberladye.  When I arrived the conveyance was filled with local travellers and I started to walk three and a half miles to my friend.  After I had gone about half a mile I passed by a magnificent entrance to a fine estate.  Soon after this I heard a carriage coming, and when it caught up to me the gentleman who was driving in the dog-cart pulled up and asked if I was going to Aberladye and invited me to take a lift.  I thanked him and mounted beside him.  He asked where I wanted to go.  I told him to Rose Cottage, when we entered into general conversation.  He learned that I was from China, so we had quite a pleasant time, and, arriving opposite to Rose Cottage, he pulled up and graciously pointed to the house, bade me good-bye, and hoped we might meet again.

I went up to the door and rang the bell, and the old lady herself answered it all in a flutter, as she had seen me set down from the trap, which was driven by Lord Rosebery himself.  Well, I asked if Mrs. McKippen lived there.  She replied, “Yes; I am she.”  I said, “Perhaps you don’t remember me?” She said, “No; but I know your voice.”  I told her that I was Arthur Knights.  “Aye, laddie,” she cried, “I heard that you was drowned at sea twenty-five years ago.”  Well, I need hardly say that I was welcome to her and her husband, who was a retired business man.  Poor old gentleman, he cried as a child when she told him of my taking the trouble to come and see her, and how when I was a small boy at a juvenile party I was sore distressed by my dancing slippers being too big and that they kept slipping off.  Then she came to the rescue and took me to one side and stitched them to the heel of my stocking to enable me to have a good time.

I spent a couple of days with my friends and then went on my way, and I have often wondered whether that lady could possibly have connected my manhood voice with that of my childhood.

An Incident of the Great Taiping Rebellion.

In the latter part of 1862 I left Shanghai on my usual voyage to Hankow.  This port is six hundred miles up the Yangtse River.  After we had got about sixty miles up the river, which is here about ten miles wide, our attention was drawn to a number of human bodies floating down the river, most of them mutilated.  This lasted about thirty hours.  As we steamed along near the shore, the farmers, with their families, were for miles gathered here and there, gesticulating, prostrating themselves, and praying for us to take them on board.  The poor creatures were between the Imperialist soldiers and the rebels, or Taipings.  Both of these parties were ravaging, devastating, and destroying all before them, and the poor peasants had a very hard time.  We could not help these poor creatures, and had to pass on our way.