"Shortly after the experience above described, I retired for the night and, as I usually do, slept quietly until morning. I did not speculate particularly about the strange appearance of the night before, and though I thought of it some, I did not tell anybody. The following morning I rose, not conscious of having dreamed anything, but I was very firmly impressed with the idea that there was something for me at the telegraph-office. I tried to throw off the impression, for so far as I knew there was no reason for it. Having nothing to do, I went out for a walk; and to help throw off the impression above noted, I walked away from the telegraph-office. As I proceeded, however, the impression became a conviction, and I actually turned about and went to the very place I had resolved not to visit, the telegraph-office. The first person I saw on arriving at said office was the telegraph-operator, who being on terms of intimacy with me, remarked: 'Hello, papa, I've got a telegram for you.' The telegram announced the birth of a boy, weighing nine pounds, and that all were doing well. Now, then, I have no theory at all about the events narrated above; I never had any such experience before nor since; I am no believer in spiritualism, am not in the least superstitious, know very little about 'thought-transference,' 'unconscious cerebration,' etc., etc., but I am absolutely certain about what I have tried to relate. "In regard to the remark which I heard, 'It is a little Herman,' etc.; I would add that we had previously decided to call the child, if a boy, _Herman_--my own name, by the way."[125] The hallucination sometimes carries a change of the general consciousness with it, so as to appear more like a sudden lapse into a dream. The following case was given me by a man of 43, who had never anything resembling it before: