Over the Teacups | Page 9

of March 5, 1887. My own knowledge of the
case came from "Kirby's Wonderful Museum," a work presented to me
at least thirty years ago. I had not looked at the account, spoken of it,
nor thought of it for a long time, when it came to me by a kind of
spontaneous generation, as it seemed, having no connection with any
previous train of thought that I was aware of. I consider the evidence of
entire independence, apart from possible "telepathic" causation,
completely water-proof, airtight, incombustible, and unassailable.
I referred, when first reporting this curious case of coincidence, with
suggestive circumstances, to two others, one of which I said was the
most picturesque and the other the most unlikely, as it would seem, to
happen. This is the first of those two cases:--
Grenville Tudor Phillips was a younger brother of George Phillips, my
college classmate, and of Wendell Phillips, the great orator. He lived in
Europe a large part of his life, but at last returned, and, in the year 1863,
died at the house of his brother George. I read his death in the paper;
but, having seen and heard very little of him during his life, should not
have been much impressed by the fact, but for the following occurrence:
between the time of Grenville Phillips's death and his burial, I was
looking in upon my brother, then living in the house in which we were
both born. Some books which had been my father's were stored in
shelves in the room I used to occupy when at Cambridge. Passing my
eye over them, an old dark quarto attracted my attention. It must be a
Bible, I said to myself, perhaps a rare one,--the "Breeches" Bible or
some other interesting specimen. I took it from the shelves, and, as I
did so, an old slip of paper fell out and fluttered to the floor. On lifting
it I read these words:
The name is Grenville Tudor.
What was the meaning of this slip of paper coming to light at this time,
after reposing undisturbed so long? There was only one way of
explaining its presence in my father's old Bible;--a copy of the
Scriptures which I did not remember ever having handled or looked
into before. In christening a child the minister is liable to forget the
name, just at the moment when he ought to remember it. My father

preached occasionally at the Brattle Street Church. I take this for
granted, for I remember going with him on one occasion when he did
so. Nothing was more likely than that he should be asked to officiate at
the baptism of the younger son of his wife's first cousin, Judge Phillips.
This slip was handed him to remind him of the name: He brought it
home, put it in that old Bible, and there it lay quietly for nearly half a
century, when, as if it had just heard of Mr. Phillips's decease, it flew
from its hiding-place and startled the eyes of those who had just read
his name in the daily column of deaths. It would be hard to find
anything more than a mere coincidence here; but it seems curious
enough to be worth telling.
The second of these two last stories must be told in prosaic detail to
show its whole value as a coincidence.
One evening while I was living in Charles Street, I received a call from
Dr. S., a well-known and highly respected Boston physician, a
particular friend of the late Alexander H. Stephens, vice-president of
the Southern Confederacy. It was with reference to a work which Mr.
Stephens was about to publish that Dr. S. called upon me. After talking
that matter over we got conversing on other subjects, among the rest a
family relationship existing between us,--not a very near one, but one
which I think I had seen mentioned in genealogical accounts. Mary S.
(the last name being the same as that of my visitant), it appeared, was
the great-great-grandmother of Mrs. H. and myself. After cordially
recognizing our forgotten relationship, now for the first time called to
mind, we parted, my guest leaving me for his own home. We had been
sitting in my library on the lower floor. On going up-stairs where Mrs.
H. was sitting alone, just as I entered the room she pushed a paper
across the table towards me, saying that perhaps it might interest me. It
was one of a number of old family papers which she had brought from
the house of her mother, recently deceased.
I opened the paper, which was an old-looking document, and found that
it was a copy, perhaps made in this century, of the will of that same
Mary S. about whom we had been