A lady, distinguished alike for her literary gifts as well as for her philanthropy, sends me the following:--
“I am much obliged to you for sending me ‘Perils.’ It is a terrible subject, and one that has haunted me all my life, insomuch that I have never made a will without inserting a clause requiring my throat to be cut before I am put underground. Of course one can have no reliance on doctors whatever, and I have myself known a case in which a very eminent one insisted on a coffin being screwed down because the corpse looked so life-like and full of colour that the friends could not help indulging in hopes.
“My great grandmother, after whom I am called, a famous heiress, was a notable case of narrow escape. As a girl she passed into a state of apparent death, and a great funeral was ordered for her. Among the guests came a young girl friend, who insisted that she was not dead, and raised such a stir that the funeral was postponed, and time was allowed to pass till the marvel became that there were no signs of change. I could never ascertain how long this comatose state lasted before she recovered; but she _did_ recover, so thoroughly that after her marriage with Richard Trench, of Garbuly, she became the mother of twenty-two children. Obviously this was no case of a feeble, hysterical, cataleptic subject. I will enclose photograph taken from a miniature of her in a ring in my possession.
“There was another case, well known in Ireland in my youth, of a Colonel Howard, who had a fine place (I think it was called Castle Howard) in Wicklow. He was supposed to be dead, and a lead coffin was actually made with his name and date of death on it; after which Colonel Howard came to life, and had the plate of the coffin fixed over his kitchen chimney as a warning to his servants not to bury people in a hurry.”
Dr. Colin S. Valentine, LL.D., Principal of the Medical Missionary Training College, Agra, N.W.P., told the author during his visit to Agra, February, 1896, that Captain Young, an officer in the regiment of which he (Dr. Valentine) was at that time army surgeon, who had been dreadfully mauled while tiger-hunting in Madras, was laid out for dead, and all the arrangements were made for his funeral at six o’clock that evening, when consciousness returned, and he lived for twenty years after.