In 1867, Miss G., aged eighteen, died suddenly of cholera in St.
Louis. In 1876 a brother, F. G., who was much attached to her, had
done a good day's business in St. Joseph. He was sending in his
orders to his employers (he is a commercial traveller) and was smoking
a cigar, when he became conscious that some one was sitting on his
left, with one arm on the table. It was his dead sister. He sprang
up to embrace her (for even on meeting a stranger whom we take for a
dead friend, we never realise the impossibility in the half moment of
surprise) but she was gone. Mr. G. stood there, the ink wet on his
pen, the cigar lighted in his hand, the name of his sister on his
lips. He had noted her expression, features, dress, the kindness of
her eyes, the glow of the complexion, and what he had never seen
before, _a bright red scratch on the right side of her face_.

Mr. G. took the next train home to St. Louis, and told the story to
his parents. His father was inclined to ridicule him, but his mother
nearly fainted. When she could control herself, she said that,
unknown to any one, she had accidentally scratched the face of the
dead, apparently with the pin of her brooch, while arranging something
about the corpse. She had obliterated the scratch with powder, and
had kept the fact to herself. "She told me she _knew_ at least that I
had seen my sister." A few weeks later Mrs. G. died. {75}

Here the information existed in one living mind, the mother's, and if
there is any "mental telegraphy," may thence have been conveyed to Mr.
F. G.

Another kind of cases which may be called veracious, occurs when the
ghost seer, after seeing the ghost, recognises it in a portrait not
previously beheld. Of course, allowance must be made for fancy, and