dulged in unrestrained
ridicule. It happened that the events of this very person's life had
just previously passed before my mind. I turned to him with the
question, whether he would reply to me with truth and candour, if I
narrated to him the most secret passages of his history, he being as
little known to me as I to him. That would, I suggested, go something
beyond Lavater's physiognomical skill. He promised, if I told the truth,
to admit it openly. Then I narrated the events which my dream-vision had
furnished me with, and the table learned the history of the young
tradesman's life, of his school years, his peccadilloes, and finally of
a little act of roguery committed by him on the strong-box of his
employer. I described the uninhabited room, with its white walls, where,
to the right of the brown door, there had stood upon the table the small
black money-chest, &c. A dead silence reigned in the company during this
recital, which I broke in upon, only by occasionally asking whether I
spoke the truth. The man, much struck, admitted the correctness of each
circumstance--even, which I could not expect, of the last. Touched with
his frankness, I reached my hand to him across the table, and closed my
narrative. He asked my name, which I gave him. We sat up late in the
night conversing. He may be alive yet.

"Now, I can well imagine how a lively imagination could picture, romance
fashion, from the obvious character of a person, how he would act under
given circumstances. But whence came to me the involuntary knowledge of
accessory details, which were without any sort of interest, and
respected people who for the most part were perfectly indifferent to me,
with whom I neither had, nor wished to have, the slightest association?
Or was it in each case mere coincidence? Or had the listener, to whom I
described his history, each time other images in his mind than the
accessory ones of my story, but, in surprise at the essential
resemblance of my story to the truth, lost sight of the points of
difference? Yet I have, in consideration of this possible source of
error, several times taken pains to describe the most trivial
circumstances that the dream-vision has shown me.

"Not another word about this strange seer-gift--which I can aver was of
no use to me in a single instance, which manifested itself occasionally
only, and quite independently of my volition, and often in relation to
persons in whose history I took not the slight