CURIOUS COINCIDENCES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2355, 13 April 1899, Page 55

CURIOUS COINCIDENCES.

(Belgravia.)

Mr James Brinsley Richards, author of " Seven Years at Eton," tells a curious story about himself and Mi Angelo, the fencing master at Harrow, Westminster, and other places. It is a very weird incident, and something more than a strange coincidence, and might well claim the attention of Mr Stead or the Psychical Research Society. Let me tell the story in Mr Richards's own words : —

" A curious adventure occurred to me in connection with Mr Angelo, which I will mention for tl?e benefit, of those who like ghost stories. In iMarch, 1869, alighting from a train at Buckingham, I saw Mr Angelo get out of a compartment next to mine and walk across the platform in company with a couple of young fellows who were very gay and frolicsome. One of them gave the othei a push, upon which the latter said, ' Isn't he behaving badly, Mi* Angelo?'

" I intended to accost Mr Angelo, but thought I would wait until he had parted with the two gentlemen, who were strangers to me. Presently they both entered a private carriage, which had come to the station for them, and drove off. but when I looked round for Mr Angelo I saw he ha<l disappeared. Imagining he had entered one of the waiting rooms, I lingered about tho entrance to the station for a quarter of an hour, but he war not to be seen. I thought this ratbei strange at the time, for the , Buckingham station on the arriving side had but one approach, and Air Angelo could not have walked away along it without being noticed by me. "In the following - week I was .at Harrow, and lunching at the King's Head with a young relative of mine, when the conversation fell upon fencing, and the boy casually alluded lo his fencing master as being the successor of Angelo, who was dead. ' Dead,' I exclaimed, ' how very sudden! Why, -I saw him not ar week ago!' ' You couldn't have seer Angelo, the fencing master,' answered the boy, ' for he has been dead some years.' I really stared. If there had only been tho evidence of my eyes as to Mr Angelo's appearance on the platform of Buckingham station, I should have concluded at once that my sight had deceived me. but I had distinctly heard Mr Angelo addressed by name. I had the plainest recollection of having heard one of the two young men in whose company he was sa}-, ' Isn't he behaving badly, Mr Angelo?' "On my return to town from Harrow, I had the fact of Mr Angelo's death some years previously amply confirmed. Hero the story ends. Nothing ever came of the apparition I had witnessed. It brought me no portent ; it had not been preceded by any thoughts about Mr Angelo, and it was followed by no circumstance which can throw the faintest light upon it, so that, of course, I am bound to submit to the inference that I was labouring undei an optical and acoustic delusion. Still, I am not convinced of this myself in my own mind, and I have always thought of the incident as being one of those mysteries which are, perhaps, thrown into our lives to make us weary of scoffing too readily at strange things reported by others."

A Cambridge lawyer once told me of a peculiar adventure he had in a railway train on the way to London. On getting into his carriage he saw as he supposed a man with whom he was on terms of. pretty close intimacy, and accosted Mm in a familiar manner. But the other rejected all his advances, denied the pleasure of his acquaintance, and took refuge in his paper. My friend, thinking it a joke, tried him again, but with no hetter result. On reaching town, the lawyer, utterly puzzled, and not knowing what to make of it, drove straight to the chambers of the man whom he thought he had seen in the train. Ho found him in, and heard that he had not been far from home that day. The lawyer, a hard-headed business man of the world, swears that the likeness was complete in every particular — the one being a facsimile of the other. Here was a pretty plain case of a double, and I have heard of similar instances, though not so striking. What a mystery though might arise ouc of such an incident, and what misleading evidence might be tendered honestly enough in a court of law in circumstances of similar mistaken identity!