A peasant saw his dog attacked by a strange and ferocious mastiff. He tried to separate the animals, and received a bite from his own dog, which instantly ran off through the fields. The wound was healed in a few days, and the dog was not to be found, and the peasant after some time began to feel symptoms of nervous agitation. He conceived that the dog, from disappearing, was mad, and within a day or two after this idea had struck him, he began to feel symptoms of hydrophobia. They grew hourly more violent; he raved, and had all the evidence of a violent distemper.
As he was lying with the door open to let in the last air he was to breathe, he heard his dog bark. The animal ran up to the bedside and frolicked about the room; it was clear that he at least was in perfect health. The peasant's mind was relieved at the instant; he got up with renewed strength, dressed himself, plunged his head into a basin of water, and thus refreshed walked into the room to his astonished family.—_Prof. Barrantini._
The annexed story is gravely recorded in "Dodsley's Annual Register:" "The following extraordinary affair happened at Ferrybridge, in 1767. The wife of one Thomas Benson, being suddenly taken ill, she, to all appearances, expired, and continued without any symptoms of life the whole day, and every proper requisite was ordered for her burial; but the husband, hoping for consolation in his distress, by some money which he had reason to believe she had secreted from him in her lifetime, began a rummage for it, and found seven pounds ten shillings in crown pieces concealed in an old box; but, upon his attempting to take it away, he was surprised by his wife, who was just then recovered, and met him and terribly frightened him by appearing as if nothing had happened."
The wife of the consul of Cologne, Retchmuth, apparently died of the plague, in 1571. A ring of great value, buried with her, tempted the cupidity of the grave-digger, and was the cause of many future years of happiness. At night the purloiner marched to his plunder, and she revived. She lived to be the mother of three children, and, when really dead, she was reburied in the same church, where a monument was erected, upon which the above particulars are recited in German verse.—_Edmund Fillingham King._