follows:

Miss C.E. was in the breakfast-room, about 6:30 P.M., in January 1883, and
supposed her father to be taking a walk with his dog. She heard noises,
which may have had any other cause, but which she took to be the sounds
of a key in the door lock, a stick tapping the tiles of the hall, and the
patter of the dog's feet on the tiles. She then saw the dog pass the door.
Miss C.E. next entered the hall, where she found nobody; but in the pantry
she met her sisters--Miss E., Miss H.G.E.--and a working-woman. Miss E.
and the working-woman had been in the hall, and there had heard the sound,
which they, like Miss C.E., took for that of a key in the lock. They were
breaking a little household rule in the hall, so they 'ran straightway
into the pantry, meeting Miss H.G.E. on the way.' Miss C.E. and Miss E.
and the working-woman all heard the noise as of a key in the lock, but
nobody is said to have 'seen the father cross the hall' (as Herr Parish
asserts). 'Miss H.G.E. was of opinion that Miss E. (now dead) saw
_nothing_, and Miss C.E. was inclined to agree with her.' Miss E. and the
work-woman (now dead) were 'emphatic as to the father having entered the
house;' but this the two only _inferred_ from hearing the noise, after
which they fled to the pantry. Now, granting that some other noise was
mistaken for that of the key in the lock, we have here, _not_ (as Herr
Parish declares) a _collective_ yet discrepant hallucination--the
discrepancy being caused 'by the difference of connected associations'--
but a _solitary_ hallucination. Herr Parish, however, inadvertently
converts a solitary into a collective hallucination, and then uses the
example to explain collective hallucinations in general. He asserts
that Miss E. 'saw her father cross the hall.' Miss E.'s sisters think that
she saw no such matter. Now, suppose that Mr. E. had died at the moment,
and that the case was claimed on our part as a 'collective coincidental
hallucination,' How righteously Herr Parish might exclaim that all the
evidence was against its being collective! The sound in the lock, heard by
three persons, would be, and probably was, another noise misinterpreted.
And, in any case, there is no evidence for its having produced _two_
hallucinations; the evidence is in exactly the opposite direction.

Here, then, Herr Parish, with the printed story under his eyes, once more
illustrates want of attention. In one way his errors improve his case. 'If
I, a