requested by Lord L---- to procure for him, before his wife's burial,
the wedding ring from her finger. The poor lady's body was terribly
swollen and discolored, and Miss T---- had to use considerable effort to
withdraw the ring from the dead finger. The effect of the whole
disastrous event upon her was to leave her for several months afflicted
with an affection of the eyes, which represented half of the face of
every person she saw with the swollen, livid, and distorted features of
her drowned cousin; a horrible and ghastly result of the nervous shock
she had undergone, which she feared she should never be delivered from,
but which gradually wore itself out.

The only time I ever saw an apparition was under singularly unfavorable
circumstances for such an experience. I was sitting at midday in an
American railroad car, which every occupant but my maid and myself had
left to go and get some refreshment at the station, where the train
stopped some time for that purpose. I was sitting with my maid in a
small private compartment, sometimes occupied by ladies travelling
alone, the door of which (wide open at the time) communicated with the
main carriage, and commanded its entire length. Suddenly a person
entered the carriage by a door close to where I sat, and passed down the
whole length of the car. I sprang from my seat, exclaiming aloud, "There
is C----!" and rushed to the door before, by any human possibility, any
one could have reached the other end of the car; but nobody was to be
seen. My maid had seen nothing. The person I imagined I had seen was
upwards of two hundred miles distant; but what was to me the most
curious part of this experience was that had I really met the person I
saw anywhere, my most careful endeavor would have been to avoid her,
and, if possible, to escape being seen by her; whereas this apparition,
or imagination, so affected my nerves that I rushed after it as if
desirous of pursuing and overtaking it, while my deliberate desire with
regard to the image I thus sprang towards would have been never to have
seen it again as long as I lived. The state of the atmosphere at the
time of this occurrence was extraordinarily oppressive, and charged with
a tremendous thunder-storm, a condition of the air which, as I have
said, always acts with extremely distressing and disturbing influence
upon my whole physical system.

ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, February, 1828.
MY DEAR