A WRAITH.
rro WIZ EDITOR Or THE "sesorkroa.nj Sra,—Mr. Brocklehurst's letter in your issue of the 23rd inst. is an excellent example of the "thoroughly well authenticated" ghost-story which when looked into it has, we find, hardly a shred of evidence to support it. Your correspondent says in the good old familiar manner : "I have personally certified every detail, and vouch for the correctness" of the story. As a matter of evidence, the only detail for which he can vouch is that be found his neighbour's cook in a state of great agitation (apparently) due to a telegram announcing the death of her mother, who, it seems, bad been burned to death on the previous evening. The rest of the story is hearsay on hearsay. He was told by the housemaid that on the evening before the cook had told her that she had seen some one trying to smother her mother with sheets of brown paper, and that she was sure something dreadful had happened to her. It is on the faith of what Mr. Brocklehurst tells us the housemaid told him the cook told her that we are expected to believe in "a veritable case" of second-sight. Even assuming that the housemaid stuck to her story under cross-examina- tion, and that the cook corroborated her, their evidence would be quite worthless in a case of this sort from the fact that the story was not told till after the happening of the event alleged to be foreseen. As for the sheets of brown paper, I am afraid we can only look on them as what Pooh-bah calls "artistic details, introduced to give an air of verisimilitude to an other- wise bald and unconvincing narrative." Mr. Brocklehurst says: "Such second-sight phenomena are not unknown." They are not, indeed. They are as common as blackberries in September—and about as valuable.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Badminton Club, 100 Piccadilly, W.
H. FINLAY KNIGHT.
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