Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/178

166 of making a human body so transparent as to render visible not only the bones but the details of their internal construction.

In common with others who have been for many years on the staff of a large hospital, I have seen much of death and have heard even more from those who have been in attendance on the dying. In this experience of a lifetime I have never met with a single circumstance which would confirm or support the propositions advanced by M. Flammarion. This is obviously no argument. It is merely a record of negative experience. The only two events, within my personal knowledge, which bear even remotely upon the present subject are the following.

I was, as a youth, on a walking tour in the south of England with a cousin. We put up one night at a certain inn. In the morning my companion came down to breakfast much excited and perturbed. He declared that his father was dead, that in a vivid dream he had seen him stretched out dead upon the couch in his familiar bedroom at home. He had awakened suddenly and noted that the hour was 2 That his father had expired at that moment he was assured, so assured that he proposed to return home at once, since his mother was alone. Inasmuch as the journey