[ David Davies, editor and proprietor of the South Wales Daily Post, Swansea ] Typed Letter Signed ('Dd. Davies'), with long autograph postscript, to Sir Courtenay Mansel, regarding Mansel's palmistry reading and Davies's subsequent health problems.

3pp., 8vo. Autograph postscript of nine lines on otherwise-blank reverse of second leaf. On aged and worn paper, with holing to one corner from stud which attached the leaves together. He was pleased to hear from Mansel, and understands from his letter that 'notwithstanding your disabilities you manage to put in a deal of work'. He continues: 'I shall be particularly interested in your plays, which are more in my line than music. He quotes Mansel's 'notes on the print of my hand', which he finds 'particularly interesting, in view of the fact that they were made more than 11 years ago'. The notes predict 'great misfortune, danger between the ages of 40-45, perhaps illness connected with the heart'. He recalls that in 1898, when 'crossing from New York to Liverpool, two or three American ladies, who affected a knowledge of palmistry, regarding which I was a pronounced sceptic, made practically the same prediction of a great trouble, “worse than death,” one of them said, which would probably overtake me before I reached 50 years of age'. He 'reached 50 years without serious trouble or illness of any account, had heart trouble in 1914, which was practically cured by a sea voyage. | In 1917, I suffered the great nervous collapse, which for months, made life a blank to me.' On the question of 'the other notes', he feels that 'when lines are read by a friend, there is a predisposition to flatter'. He would like to spend a weekend with Mansel, but his diary is full in the period preceding a planned 'holiday to St. Malo'. The postscript concerns the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.