About the year 1766 I was in Lincolnshire on a visit to a widow lady, Mrs. E. It was summer and after supper one evening Mrs. E. and I went to take a turn in the garden. It was about eleven o’clock, to avoid the night air of the Fens, we were walking in a bower shaded by hazel bushes. On a sudden she screamed and pointed to a white shapeless figure without head or arms, moving along one of the walks at some distance away. I quitted my companion and went after it. When I got up into the walk where the figure was, it took a cross walk. There was a holly bush on the corner of the two walks, which, being night, I did not observe, and as I continued to step forward the holly bush came in a straight line between me and the figure, which thus appeared to have vanished. But when I had passed the bush I caught sight of the figure again, and coming up to it put out my hand to touch it. My hand rested on the shoulder of a human figure. I spoke, it answered “Pray let me alone.” I then recognised a young lady on a visit to Mrs. E., who that evening, on the plea of indisposition, had not joined us at supper. I said, “My God! I hope you are not going to do yourself some hurt!” She replied, with pathetic melancholy, “Life has not one pleasure left for me.” I got her into the house, and Mrs. E. took her to sleep in her room. The case was, the man who had promised to marry her had forsaken her, and was about to be married to another. The shock and sorrow appeared to her too great to be borne. She had retired to her room, and when, as she supposed, all the family had gone to bed, she undressed herself, tied her apron over her head--which, descending below her waist, gave her a shapeless figure--and was going to drown herself in a pond at the bottom of the garden, when I arrested her progress. [Sidenote: PAINE’S FORGETFULNESS] By gentle usage, and leading her into subjects that might distract her mind and occupy her thoughts, we gradually stole her from the horror and misery she was in. In the course of a few months she recovered her former cheerfulness, and was afterwards a happy wife and mother of a family.