houses as a sort of friend, and information of his presence in the village was quickly conveyed to the neighbours, so that he generally had a large gathering of women who were all friendly to him, and he was never allowed to go away without reward.  When any stranger was present he would point them out, and write down the initials of their name, and sometimes their names in full, without being asked.  He would also, at times, write down the names of relatives of those present who lived at a distance, and tell them when they would receive letters from them, and whether these letters would contain good or bad news.  He disclosed the whereabouts of sailor lads and absent lovers, detected thefts, foretold deaths and marriages, and the names of the parties on both sides who were to be married.  He wrote of a young woman, a stranger in the village, but who was present on one of his visits, and was on the eve of being married to a tradesman, that she would not be married to him, but would marry one who would keep her counting money; which came to pass.  The tradesman and she fell out, and afterwards she married a haberdasher, and for a long time was in the shop as cashier.  This woman still lives, and firmly believes in the prophetic gift of dummy.  Another woman, a stranger also, asked him some questions relative to herself; he shook his head, and for a long time refused to answer, desiring her not to insist.  This made her the more anxious, and at last he drew upon the slate the figure of a coffin.  This was all the length he would go.  In less than twelve months the woman was in her grave.  During one of his visits the husband of one of the women who attended him was seriously ill, and the wife, a stout healthy woman, was anxious to hear from dummy the result of her husband’s illness.  He wrote that the husband would recover, and that she would die before him; and she did die not long after.  In short, this dummy was a regular prophet, and his predictions were implicitly believed by all who attended upon him.  In his case there was no pretension to visions, the form which he allowed his gift to assume was that of intuition.  Some few men in the village suspected the dummy’s honesty, and thought that he heard and assiduously and cunningly picked up knowledge of the parties; but such doubts were regarded as bordering upon blasphemy by the believers in dummy.  I was never present at any of these gatherings, but my information is gathered from those who were present.  Some months ago I was talking to an ordinarily intelligent person on this subject, and he gave it as his opinion that dumb persons had their loss of the faculties of hearing and speech recompensed to them in the gift of supernatural knowledge, and he related how a certain widow lady of his acquaintance had been informed of the death of her son.  This son was abroad, and she had with her in the house a mute, who one day made signs to her that she would never see her son again, and a few weeks after she received word of his death.