I had a friend by the name of Abbey whose condition during the five years before his death interested even while it repelled me. He had even as a boy been excessively delicate in health, and in manhood he broke down under the pressure of excessive mental labor. Could a medium or magnetizer have got hold of him his hallucinations or clairvoyant powers might have been made a source of considerable profit. He was calling in my study one day when one of his trances came on. He had been exceedingly anxious to get out of town by the three-o'clock train, and this necessity pursued him even into his unconscious state. He lay on my lounge facing a bookcase and a window whose shade was pulled down. At his back, and quite at the other end of the room, was a small clock on the mantel, with a face so indistinct that I was obliged to get up and peer directly into it in order to find out what time it was. While I was sitting by the poor fellow he began to moan and mutter. "I must get away," said he, "or I cannot take the three-o'clock train. It is already twenty minutes past twelve." I took my watch from my pocket. It was twenty minutes past twelve. But how did he know it? He had been lying before me with his eyes closed and his ears apparently impervious to sound for about two hours. Twenty-five minutes later he remarked, "It is a quarter to one." He kept along with the time, and when three o'clock came was in a state of wild delirium over his loss of the train. Had he looked at his watch every other moment for the past three hours he could not have kept a more accurate account of the time. I saw him frequently in these trances, which sometimes lasted two days. I have held before his closed eyes a succession of photographic portraits, each of which he has recognized without seeing, uttering the name of the person. Once I laid down the pile beside him, and his hands, which always had a trick of feebly wandering, sought the pictures. I waited to see what he would do. He was at the time deeply infatuated with a young lady whose carte-de-visite I had shown him. By some inscrutable instinct he contrived to select it from the others. His face lighted up when he held it, and as long as I permitted his hand to close upon it he wore an expression of rapture. When I took it away he seemed to suffer a violent shock. I could now and then, when he was in this state, arouse his mind and persuade him to take an imaginary walk. At such times he frequently startled me, used as I had become to his phenomenal powers of vision, by seeing something which was actually taking place half a mile away. Once he said, "There is the water: I see six sails. What is it they are doing on the tower of Mr. B----'s house? _Oh! oh! oh!_"--here he became violently agitated--"_the scaffolding is giving way! There is a man falling!_" At that very moment the scaffolding on the tower of Mr. B----'s house did give way and a man did fall--without injury, however.