Page:Stories Translated from the German.djvu/197

 But let us leave these whims of our Balzer (a repulsive name, and a disagreeable abbreviation Balthasar.)

This Balzer also maintains, that many of the prophetic dreams of events which have happened—of warning forebodings which have afterwards been fulfilled—exist in real life to a far more considerable degree than people will usually allow. Exactly so, he says, when we think suddenly of a person, whom we had not thought of before for years, and at the very moment the postman rings the bell, in order to deliver us a letter from this long-forgotten acquaintance, that there is nothing very remarkable in it.

He likewise affirms, that every body must have observed, that frequently after having heard a story or an occurrence related, which has not been thought of for several years, he enters another company, still absorbed in deep meditation at the idea how it has been possible that people should not have paid attention to such a remarkable fact during so long a period, and there hears the same story repeated, without anything having happened to give rise to it, and so again in a third and fourth circle, that he could almost swear the recollection