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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 126, 1 June 1869, Page 2

Animal Magnetism. — A correspondent writing to the London Spectator on " Brain Waves a Theory,'' says " Mr. Woolner, the sculptor, tells me the following story of two young men, — one of them a personal friend of his own, now living. These two men lived for very long as great friends, but ultimately quarrelled, shortly before the departure of one of them to New Zealand. The emigrant had been absent a number of years! and Ms friend at home (Mr Woolner's informant") never having kept up a correspondence with him had naturally almost lost the habit of thinking about him or his affairs. One day, however as he sat in his rooms in a strcet^near Oxford-street the thought of his friend came suddenly upon him, accompanied by the most restless and indefinable discomfort. He could by no means account for it, but, finding the feeling grow more oppressive, he tried to throw it off by change of occupation. Stilt the disuorafoit grew, till itamounted to a sort of strange horror. He' thought he must he sickening for a bad illness ancfat length, being unable to do anything else, went out of doors and walked up and oown the busiest streets, hoping by the sight and sound of multitudes of men and ordinary tilings, to dissipate Ins strange and mysterious misery. Not however, till he had wandered to and fro in the most wretched state of feeling: for nearly two hours utterly unable to shake off an intolerable sort of vague consciousness of his friend, did the itn pression leave him and his usual frame of mind return. So greatly was he struck and puzzled by all this, that he wrote down precisely the date of the day and hour of the occurrence, fully expect ing to have news of or from his old friend And surely, when the next mail or the next but one arrived, there came the horrible news that on that very day (allowance being made for longitude) his friend had been made prisoner by the Natives of New Zealand, and put to a slow death with the most frightful tortures."