Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1859 — Singular Instances of Presentiment. [ARTICLE]

Singular Instances of Presentiment.

In Schubert’s Spiegel der Natur, (Mirror of Nature,) the author relates, in his chapter on instinct, the following facts as proofs of a certain divine impulse in man. “A gentleman, an acquaintance of the celebrated French authoress, Mme, Beacmond, was about making a pleasure trip on the river wit* a party of friends. Everything was ready, and be was just entering the boat, when his sister, a deaf mute, came suddenly and most anxiously running along, and seized her brother’s arm and coat, tried to keep him back; but finding this unavailable, she threw herself at his feet, and taking hold of his knees, expressed by the most imploring gestures her wish that he should desist from going on the Wafer. “Touched by the painful entreating expression in tiie face and posture of the deaf mute, several persons joined in the prayers of the poor unfortunate girl, and her brother finally yielded to her wishes. It was fortunate that he did so, for the boat had gone but a short distance on the river, when a sudden gust of wind made it capsize. Several of the company found a watery grave, and he, who could not even swim, would, no doubt have met with the same fate, if his sister, by some divine presentiment, had not prevented his going. “Once, on an evening, a rich affd benign! farmer felt, by some sacred impulse, impelled to send, at. a late hour, some articles of food to a poor family in the neighborhood. “Wherefore so late; cannot this be done as well to-morrow!” said those around him. “No,” replied he, “it must be done now.” While insisting, the worthy farmer did not know what a blessing his benevolent action? was just then to the tenants of the poor hut r for there the father—he who had to nourish and sustain the family—had fallen sick; the mother was infirm already, and the children had been crying for bread for, nearly two days—the youngest was nearly dead from hunger. Thus their most pressing wants were at once removed, and perhaps some lives saved “Another gentleman, living near some coal mines in Selesia'y awoke one night from his sleep with an irresistable impulse to go down in his garden. lie rose, went down;' the same impulse led him out of the back gate of his garden into the fields, where he arrived just in time to save the life of a miner, who, in climbing up a ladder, missed his footing and fell down the shaft into a coaltub, which his son was at that time winding up, but by the increased weight was unable to do so now alone. “A venerable clergyman in England once felt, likewise, an unexpected desire to pay, late at night, a visit to a friend of his, whom he knew to be ol a very melancholy turn of mind. Though extremely tired by the cares and labors of the day, and though the distance to his friend’s house was very great, the venerable gentleman could not resist his secret impulse. So he went, and, strange to say, arrived there just in time to prevent his friend from taking his own life. The nightly visit and friendly exhortations hatß such a wholesome effect on the depressed: spirits of his friend, that he never again attempted to commit suicide. “Professor Buchner, at Marburg, being cnee in very pleasant company, felt a strong desire to go home and remove his bed from, its old place to another corner of his bedroom. He yielded to the impulse. Having done so, he felt again at ease and went back to his friends. During the night a large portion of the ceiling in the room, jast at the spot where his bed formerly stood, crumbled down, and would no doubt have crushed him to death had it not been removed from there.”