The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1896-10-21
LIFE'S MYSTERIES.
QUEER EXPERIENCE RELATED
BY A NEWSPAPER MAN.
A Lady's Startling Vision on
Steamer-The Warning Voice
That Saved q Train-What
Doctor Saw.
ITHE stories I am about to re-
late, writes E. Y. Smalley OF
the Chicago mes-Herald, l

the Chicago Times Herald, I
got at first hands, which is,
perhaps, their chief merit. We read
a good many things in books and
newspapers that are out of the ordi.
nary range of our experience and
which we hesitate to believe, but when
a friend tells us face to face and with
all seriousness of some extraordinary
occurrence, we are very apt to treas
ure it up in memory and classify it
with the unexplained phenomena of
this mysterious human life of ours.
A lady of my acquaintance, who is
engaged in newspaper work in New
York, received visit few years ago
from Western friend who was about
to take Sound steamer for Boston
the same evening. While they were
talking the lady had startling Wis
ion. She seemed to see the man
walking on the deck of steamer on q
dark night, when the falling rain
froze into sleet as it struck the Geek.
He slipped and fell, slid under the
guard rail and was engulfed in the
sea. The vision came and passed in q
a second. The lady begged her friend
not to 90 on the steamer that night.
She told him what she had seen. He
was q materialist and laughed the
whole matter off as bit of idle fancy.
He took the boat that evening, slipped
on the icy deck, fell overheard just
as he did in the vision and was
drowned.
Three years ago was living in car
and travelling from town to town in
the State of Washington. In Cheney
I had call from real estate man.
Some way OF other the talk drifted to
queer 'experiences. My friend told
me had one such experience in life,
and one only. Ten years before he
was running train out of Chicago as
O conductor on one of the Burlington
lines. One morning after heavy rains,
when there, were freshets in the streams,
he stood upon the platform of a way
station about three miles from the
crossing of q small river. He was
about to signal the engineer to go
ahead, when voice spoke plainly in
his ear. "Look out for the bridget"
No o. as standing near at the time.
He wa.Ard forward and said to the en-
g1neer, "Jim, I think you had better
slow down at the curve just this side
of the bridge. "There is nothing the
matter with the bridge" said the en-
gineer, COR we would have had wire
from it," "Perhaps there isn't" re.
piled the conductor, ''but you slow
down all the same" There was sharp
curve O short distance from the ap-
proach to the bridge, 80 near, in fact,
that it would have been impossible to
stop the train after coming in sight of
the bridge had it been running at the
usual rate of speed. The engineer
slowed down. The bridge was gone.
It had been carried away between the
time the train left the last station and
it's arrival at the curve. Had it not
been for the mysterious warning the
whole train would have gone into the
river.
A prominent Chicago physician once
kept drug store in small town in
Illinois. Across the street from the
store was a considerable stretch OF
unfenced town lots. Sitting in the
shade in front OF the store one summer
afternoon the doctor saw young man
of his acquaintance approaching across
the open lots. When he was five or
six rods away the doctor, without any
symptoms of being in an abnormal
condition, seemed to see the whole
anatomical structure of the man-all
his bones and internal organs, and at
the same time he saw the contents OF
the young mans pockets. The vision
passed in an instant. When the youth
came up to tho doctor the latter said:
"Henry, I can tell you just what you
have in your pockets. In one OF the
pockets of your trousers you have
bunch of string for tying up bags, in
the other there is black-handled
jack. knife, two tenpenny nails and a
half dollar. The date on the half dol
lar is 1856" The young man turned
his pockets inside out and showed that
he was carrying the articles described.
He took the coin, looked at it and
found that the date named by the
doctor was correct. He was 30 as