Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/206

192 of the house, except the wife of the rector, who determined to solve the mystery. For a long time the sounds were not produced except in total darkness, but by gradually introducing the practice of burning a light at night the ringing was finally heard one night when there was a light in the room. The lady of the house then went quietly down to the dining-room and saw a large rat with every expression of pleasure leaping forward and with his fore legs striking the prisms so as to make them ring, evidently taking the keenest delight in the sound thus produced. My informants were the rector and his wife.

In an article on Apparitions written by Andrew Lang, in the second volume of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," ninth edition, he says: The writer once met, as he believed, a well-known and learned member of an English university who was really dying at a place more than a hundred miles distant from that in which he was seen. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that the writer did not mistake some other individual for the extremely noticeable person whom he seemed to see, the coincidence between the subjective impression and the death of the learned professor is, to say the least, curious.

To determine whether or not it was a case of mistaken identity is very important, but no opportunity is given in the passage quoted. If it was a subjective impression, the coincidence would be curious and nothing else; though not more so, as I have shown abundantly, than many coincidences in trifles, and other circumstances absolutely disconnected, and many subjective impressions without coincidences. Mr. Lang, in the article referred to, has written like one who has crammed with the literature of the subject without being at the pains to reason closely upon the alleged facts. He refers to the superstitious horror