There is a popular idea prevalent in Lancashire that to build or even to rebuild a house is always fatal to one member of the family--generally to the one who may have been the principal promoter of the plans for the building or alteration. Again, we are also told how the household clock has been known to depart from its customary precision in order to warn its owner of approaching death by striking _thirteen_. A clergyman relates that one evening he called on an old friend more than eighty years of age, who had lost her husband about six months before. Whilst sitting with her he heard the clock strike the hour in an adjoining room, and counted it _seven_. Being surprised that it was no later he involuntarily took out his watch, and found that it was in reality _eight_ o'clock. The old lady noticing this remarked, "Ah! the clock lost a stroke against my poor husband's death, and I have not altered it since."
According to another very common superstition there seems to be a kind of sympathy and harmony between two personalities, whereby dying persons themselves announce their departure to their friends in certain mysterious ways. Countless instances are on record of such supposed forebodings of death. A curious and interesting example of this species of folk-lore happened not so very long ago, in connection with the lamented death of Mr. George Smith, the eminent Assyriologist. This famous scholar died at Aleppo, on the 19th of August, 1876, at or about the hour of six in the afternoon. On the same day, and at about the same time, a friend and fellow-worker of Mr. Smith's--Dr. Delitzsch--was passing within a stone's-throw of the house in which Mr. Smith had lived whilst in London, when he suddenly heard his own name uttered aloud in a "most piercing cry," which, says _The Daily News_ (Sept. 12th, 1876) thrilled him to the marrow. The fact impressed him so strongly that he looked at his watch, noted the hour, and, although he did not mention the circumstance at the time, recorded it in his note-book.
Again, as a further illustration, we are told how on board one of Her Majesty's ships lying off Portsmouth, the officers being one day at mess, a young lieutenant suddenly laid down his knife and fork, pushed away his plate, and turned extremely pale. He then rose from the table, covered his face with his hands, and retired. The president of the mess, supposing him to be ill, sent to make inquiries. At first he was unwilling to reply; but on being pressed he confessed that he had been seized by a sudden and irresistible impression that a brother he had in India was dead. "He died," said he, "on the 12th August, at six o'clock; I am perfectly convinced of it." No argument could overthrow his conviction, which in due course of time was verified to the letter. Events of this kind, which in the minds of many seem to point to a mysterious sympathy between two individuals, are explained by others as simply the result of "fancy and coincidence." Any one, it is argued, may fall into a brown study, and emerge from it with a stare, and the notion that he heard his name spoken. That is the part of fancy, and the simultaneous event is the part of coincidence. Against this theory it will always be argued that these coincidences are too many to be accidental, and this position, as a writer in _The Daily News_ has shown, will generally be met by counter-efforts to weaken the evidence for each individual case, and so to reduce the cumulative evidence to nothing. Taking into consideration however, the countless instances which are on record of this kind, many of them apparently resting on evidence beyond impeachment, we must, whilst allotting to them the credence they deserve, honestly admit they are occasionally beyond the limits of human explanation.