Not less extraordinary are the cures which are effected by some sudden agitation. An alarm of fire has been known to restore a patient entirely, or for a time, from a tedious illness: it is no uncommon thing to hear of the victim of a severe fit of the gout, whose feet have been utterly powerless, running nimbly away from some approaching danger. Poor Grimaldi in his declining years had almost quite lost the use of his limbs owing to the most hopeless debility. As he sat one day by the bedside of his wife, who was ill, word was brought to him that a friend waited below to see him. He got down to the parlor with extreme difficulty. His friend was the bearer of heavy news which he dreaded to communicate: it was the death of Grimaldi's son, who, though reckless and worthless, was fondly loved by the poor father. The intelligence was broken as gently as such a sad event could be: but in an instant Grimaldi sprung from his chair--his lassitude and debility were gone, his breathing, which had for a long time been difficult, became perfectly easy--he was hardly a moment in bounding up the stairs which but a quarter of an hour before he had passed with extreme difficulty in ten minutes; he reached the bedside, and told his wife that their son was dead; and as she burst into an agony of grief he flung himself into a chair, and became instantaneously, as it has been touchingly described, "an enfeebled and crippled old man." The imagination, which is remarkable for its ungovernable influence, comes into action on some occasions periodically with the most precise regularity. A friend once told us of a young relation who was subject to nervous attacks: she was spending some time at the seaside for change of air, but the evening-gun, fired from the vessel in the bay at eight o'clock, was always the signal for a nervous attack: the instant the report was heard she fell back insensible, as if she had been shot. Those about her endeavored if possible to withdraw her thoughts from the expected moment: at length one evening they succeeded, and while she was engaged in an interesting conversation the evening-gun was unnoticed. By and by she asked the hour, and appeared uneasy when she found the time had passed. The next evening it was evident that she would not let her attention be withdrawn: the gun fired, and she swooned away; and when revived, another fainting fit succeeded, as if it were to make up for the omission of the preceding evening! It is told of the great tragic actress Clairon, who had been the innocent cause of the suicide of a man who destroyed himself by a pistol-shot, that ever after, at the exact moment when the fatal deed had been perpetrated--one o'clock in the morning--she heard the shot. If asleep, it awakened her; if engaged in conversation, it interrupted her; in solitude or in company, at home or travelling, in the midst of revelry or at her devotions, she was sure to hear it to the very moment.