My dear Lord Bishop
I must apologise for not thanking you for your kind words of sympathy conveyed in your letter of Jan 9th before but I have been overwhelmed with correspondence and as one of it is so "out of the way" I thought it would be as well to submit it to you for your ripe judgement and status.
My children have calculated that I have travelled 19 times up and down the Red
Sea. Twice round the Cape - had to work my passage as a common sailor as we lost
14 sailors over board, served in the 3rd Sikh Irr Cavalry during the
Mutiny and finally finished up as Attorney General in Burmah making a steady
8,000 pounds a year - during that long period of years - over 52 - I have made
many queer friends and to my surprise after the notice of my wife's death
appeared, I have been inundated with condolences of many of whom I had long
since forgotten. One of the strangest is from a Mr. King. He has recalled to my
mind an occurrence which had long since passed out of my memory. 
During the war between
north and south States of America - when the Southerners were defeated Benjamin
their Attorney General came over to practice at the English Bar and I let him a
portion of my chambers in the temple. Cockburn and many others took him up and
he was making large business when he came into my room one day and said he had
contracted heart disease and was a dead man - and he was going to Paris for a
change but he made me swear that as long as I kept my chamber I would never take
his name off the door. I swore -- the Bar gave him a public dinner and as he
left he recalled my oath. He went to Paris. Some month or so after I had been in a case against Murphy K.C. Norton and had won and we were walking across the Temple to my chambers (no. 3) when I saw Benjamin standing in my Porch and we all lifted our heads, we had our wigs on, to salute him - He stared us in the face, made no reply and passed down the lane - I remarked how strange and on knocking at my door, my clerk opened it and put a telegram into my hand - It was - Benjamin died this morning in Paris and we had just seen him!! It got in to the Times and caused a slight sensation at the time and I gave a dinner to celebrate the event. Many years had passed and now old memories are revived by the enclosed letter of a barrister whose very name I had forgotten who writes he was one of my guests.
Please excuse this this wandering epistle but I thought perhaps you would not mind my troubling you with the account of a peculiar incident long since past as I shall soon be now 82!
Thanking you for you kind words in my sore distress.
Believe me
Yours very gratefully
E. Garnet Man