The Argosy — page 172: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

What is the Meaning of It? 157 lady’s name, but you may possibly know who I mean when I add that I recollect your father telling me that she had then recently married the kinsman of a famous artist. I forget the celebrity’s name as well as the lady’s.” He went on to say that, looking at the figure, he knew it was not real, and that, without any pretence of hearing a voice, ‘‘ it gave him to understand,” by some strange trans- fusion of ideas, that the person it represented was utterly and entirely miserable, and in great danger. ‘‘ Do you still know the lady ?” he wrote, “‘andcan you tell me whether there is any basis for this vision, or whether it is as wild and incomprehensible in matter as in manner P”’ Now Caroline Escott is a simple straightforward person, with more faith in human nature than subtle knowledge thereof. Her own walk in life had been clear and above-board, and probably she had never known a trouble which she would not, under fair circumstances and for reasonable cause, have frankly admitted. She took an early opportunity of seeing Mrs. Amory, and asking her whether, for the sake of psychological investigation, she could throw any hight on the Rev. Thomas Clark’s vision. He gave its very date—had she been ill at that time, or depressed, or worried by having to make a decision about any important matter P Mrs. Amory laughed the idea to scorn. She had been as she. always was, she said. Nothing had been wrong either within herself orin circumstances around her. Caroline Escott wrote to me, rather dismally, that here was another instance not only of the uselessness, but of the absolute misleadingness of these strange phenomena. She wrote similarly to Thomas Clark, and he was sorely disturbed to have been the victim of so deluding a phantom. In the January of the following year the Rev. Thomas Clark came to London to engage in unsectarian mission-work. We saw a great deal of him in our houses, and I was more than ever convinced of his weak character and subtle brain. Yet he was patient and faithful in the discharge of his duties, and kind and sympathetic to his poor people. I have known him take down his own railway rug to wrap a sick child, whose need he had only known when it was too late to procure a blanket. But one always felt his lack of force. He was the leaf which is blown by the wind, not the wind which blows. It is curious that, though he came of a good English stock, he had an oriental face and might easily have passed for one of themselves among the fate-believing ‘‘sons of the Prophet.” I often wondered whether the love-affair of some Crusading forefather could have left its mark on the breed, both in face and blood. | About this time Mrs. Amory began to pay me marked attention. We seldom visited each other—indeed, I may say we never did so. I had not been in her house since my own marriage and she had never been in mine. Our meetings were casual ones at the house of a mutual friend. I could never help feeling a sort of liking for her, CoOnniclooolkks (CO) im =