Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1883 — AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE. [ARTICLE]

AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE.

A Man Foretells His Death, and the Prediction is Fulillled. “TTT y ' - o A recent dispatch from Lewiston, Me., reports the following singular occurrence: Lafayette Cook, a resident-.of South Auburn, 66 years old, declared two weeks ago that he would die on Sunday, the 11th inst. He arose on Sunday morning in his usual good health, but remarked at the table that It was the last he should ever eat. After the meal he shaved carefully and arrayed himself in clean clothes, in which he requested he might be burled. He was so eccentric that people did not pay much attention to his talk. One of his peculiarities, so one of his neighbors say, was that he prepared his own meals, and never ate the food his wife did. He was an excellent man, however, and respected by all who knew him. Sunday morning-he was apparently in his usual health. He walked out with his grandchildren a shorty distance. At 4 o'clock he went into the house. He carefully shaved and washed himseif, put on a clean shirt, arid then said he would like to have a spread thrown upon the lounge. v He was given.a quilt, or something of the sort, stretched himself on the lounge, and covered himself. He put one hand down by his side, bent the other arm so that he placed the hand under his head and closed his eyes. So far as anybody knows, he did not stir from this position and never afterward spoke, but continued In a sort of a stupor until an early hour Monday morning, when the last vital spark left his body. Cook was a dead man within the time set for his demise. Those who watched him say they witnessed a slight movement of the chest, but no other sign of animation, after he lay down. He took no poison or drug of any sort. It was a simple surrender of vital power.