REMARKABLE FULFILMENT OF A PREDICTION.

A certain German author relates the following:

In my younger days, there was a dinner given in the Florenburg Westphalen, where I was born, on the occasion of a baptism to which a clergyman was invited. During dinner, the conversation turned upon the gravedigger of the place, who was well known on account of his second-sight; for, as often as he saw a corpse, he was always telling that there would be a funeral from such and such a house. Now, as the event invariably took place, the inhabitants of the house he indicated were placed by the man’s tale in the greatest anxiety.

This man’s prophecying was an abomination to the clergyman. He therefore forbade him, but all to no purpose; for the poor dolt, although he was a drunkard, and a man of low and vulgar sentiments, believed firmly that it was a prophetic gift of God, and that he must make it known, in order that the people might still repent. At length the clergyman gave him notice that, if he announced one funeral more, he should be deprived of his place, and expelled from the village. This availed—the gravedigger was silent from that time forward. Half a year afterward, in the autumn of 1745, the gravedigger came to the clergyman, and said to him: ‘Sir, you have forbidden me to announce any more funerals, and I have not done so since, nor will I do it any more; but I must tell you something that is particularly remarkable, that you may see that my second sight is really true. In a few weeks a corpse will be brought up the meadow, which will be drawn on a sledge by an ox.’ The clergyman seemingly paid no attention to this, but listened to it with indifference, and replied: ‘Only go about your business, and leave off such superstitious follies. It is sinful to have anything to do with them.’

Some weeks after a strong body of Austrian troops passed through the village on their way to the Netherlands. While resting there a day, the snow fell nearly three feet deep. At the same time, a woman died in another village of the same parish. The military took away all the horses out of the country to drag the waggons. Meanwhile the corpse lay there, no horses came back; the body began to putrify; they were, therefore, compelled to make a virtue of necessity—to place the corpse upon a sledge, and harness an ox to it.

In the meantime the clergyman, and the teacher with his scholars, proceeded to the village to meet the corpse; and, as the funeral came along the meadow in this array, the gravedigger came up to the clergyman, pulled him by the gown, pointed with his finger toward the sledge, and said not a word.

Such was the tale as related by the clergyman. I was well acquainted with the good man, and he was incapable of telling an untruth, much less in a matter which contradicted all his principles.