On two occasions she was prevailed upon to tell whose funeral she had attended the previous night, which caused her such intense distress of mind, she besought them to never again urge her to reveal that which was made known to her during her somnambulic walks. The moment the person ceased to breathe, she would say, "Mr. or Mrs. (whoever it might be) is dead."
If the death had taken place in a distant part of the country it would make no difference, so long as the burial place was there. She felt relieved as soon as the event transpired. She always visited the grave-yard between the hours of twelve and two o'clock at night. My grandfather frequently walked slowly after her to accompany her home on her return.
Another remarkable feature used to attend these nocturnal excursions of my great-grandmother, in the somnambulic condition, when she would thus witness the celebration of funerals of persons who were at the time still alive and well. She would see and recognize all the persons in attendance on the funeral, from the officiating minister down, and afterward remember and relate their names, which used always to correspond with the fact as it afterward came about. She would even tell by whose horses the body was brought to the grave (in the country at that time there were no regular hearses, and this service was performed by some friend or neighbor). When the crowded phantom funeral was over she would awake to find herself alone in the graveyard; sometimes with my grandfather (her son-in-law) awaiting at a little distance to accompany her return home. But frequently she had no such watching attendant, and I remember to have heard it said how distressing it would be for her to awake entirely alone and make her solitary way homeward, from what she knew to be the foreshadowed interment of some one near and dear.
MY AUNT ELIZABETH'S VISION OF HER OWN TOMBSTONE.
My mother's sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins, had much the same faculty. She never left her bed at night to visit scenes about to transpire, but nearly everything of importance was foreshadowed in her dreams. She would frequently relate them on the morning following. One morning, she gave us a relation of her dream. She said, laughingly, to her brother: "I dreamed I had a fall, last night. You and I were riding on horseback, when suddenly my horse stumbled and fell in front of Judge Perry's door. I rolled down the little embankment, and Tom Foot came and helped me up." Grandmother said, "That can't come true, for Tom is, by this time, far away." They thought no more of it.