CHAPTER V.

Night had come. It got in on the evening train, and was late, as

usual. The drowsy bat was on the wing; or rather, the wing was on

the drowsy bat. Both wings, in fact, were on the d. b. Down in the

mossy glade, where deepening shadows mock the starlight’s gleam, she

waits. Her Italian marble brow is clouded with a weight of sorrow. Her

finely-chiseled chin is still; the plastic chewing gum, pasted on the

trunk of a rugged oak, cools and hardens in the evening air. The firm

tread of a manly No. 9 comes crashing through the woodland.

’Tis he.

“Bertrande!”

“Margueritte!”

They said no more. They could not. They had forgotten the rest of each

other’s names. They sat in the deeping shadows of the gloaming, holding

each other’s hands, and trying to think of something nice to say.

Suddenly his delicate nostrils quivered and trembled with a startled

light.

“Margueritte!” he exclaimed, “we must fly! I hear the sound of native

applejack upon the evening air! M’ff! m’ff!”

“Oh, hevings!” she cried, “it is, it is me long lost fathyer!”

“Then,” he exclaimed, drawing a United States regulation cavalry saber

from his bosom, “I am lost!”

“Oh, no, not lost;” she said in earnest tones, “go straight ahead till

you come to the _Hawkeye_ office, then turn up Market Street two blocks

and follow the street car track south until you smell beer. Then you

will know where you are. Fe-ly! Fe-ly! Me fathyer comes.”

“Methought,” he said, pausing in his flight, and speaking sternly,

“Methought thou haddedest not a father.”

“I haive, I haive,” she shrieked, “and it is he!”

And as she spake a fatherly looking man parted the bushes and stood by

her side. He was clad in a dark blue cut-away coat, with a button-hole

bouquet, white vest, lilac kids, lavender pants, a pink necktie, waxed

mustache, and a high hat. His boots were four and a half; his snowy

handkerchief was perfumed with jockey club, and his breath with whisky

sour. He was twenty-one years of old.

Bertrande regarded him sadly, and said to her he loved:

“It seems to me your father is rather juvenile.”

“Dear Bertrande,” she said, laying her head upon her father’s shoulder,

“he married awful young.”

“Ah,” said Bertrande, bitterly, “I thought may be you had adopted him.”

And turning on his heel he was gone.

A REMINISCENCE OF EXHIBITION DAY.

“Well, no,” the boy said, “the thing didn’t go off exactly as I

expected. You see, I was the sixth boy in the class, that was next to

the head when the class formed left in front, and I was pretty near the

first boy called on to declaim. I had got a mighty good ready and had a

bully piece too. Ah, it was a rip staver.”

And the boy sighed as he paused to lift a segment out of a green apple,

and placed it where it would do the most good, for a cholera doctor. We

asked what piece it was.

“Spartacus to the Gladiators,” he said. “Just an old he raker of a

piece. I got it all by heart, and used to go clear out to the Cascade

to rehearse and hook strawberries. Old Fitch”--Mr. Fitch was the boy’s

preceptor, one of the finest educators in the state--“he taught me all

the gestures and inflections and flub drubs, and said I was just layin’

over the biggest toad in the puddle----”

“Excelling all your competitors, probably Mr. Fitch said,” we suggested.

“Yes,” the boy replied, “he’s a toney old cyclopedia on the patter, is

old Fitchy. But him and me was both dead sure I was goin’ to skin the

rag off the bush----”

“Win all the honors,” we gently corrected.

“Yes,” he said, “and the way it went off was bad. You see, I didn’t

feel easy in my Sunday clothes on a week day to begin with. And my

collar was too tight and my necktie was too blue, and I was in a hurry

to get off early, so I only blacked the toes of my boots, and left

the heels as red as a concert ticket. And the crowd there was in the

school-house. Jammed. Every body in their good clothes and every body

looking solemn as Monday morning. When my name was called something

came up in my throat as big as a foot-ball. I couldn’t swallow it and I

couldn’t spit it out. And when I got up on the platform--oh, Godfrey’s

cordial! did you ever see a million heads without any bodies?”

We felt ashamed of our limited experience while we confessed that we

could not recall having witnessed such a phenomenon.

“I never did till then,” the boy went on, “but they were there, for a

fact, and I began to remember when these heads danced round and round

the room that I had been forgetting my piece in the last five minutes

just as fast as I ever forgot to fix the kindling wood at night.

But I commenced. I got along with ‘It had been a day of triumph in

Capua’ and ‘Lentulus returning with victorious eagles’ and all that

well enough; but when I got on into the heavy business, I was left,

sure. If Spartacus had talked to the gladiators as I did, they would

have thought he was drunk and hustled him off to bed. It was awful. I

stumbled along until I came to ‘Ye stand here now like giants as ye

are. The strength of brass is in your rugged sinews, but to-morrow some

Roman Adonis, breathing sweet perfume from his curling locks, will with

his dainty fingers pat your red brawn and bet his sesterces upon your

blood.’”

“That was excellent, capital,” we said, applauding, for the boy had

growled off the last sentence like a first heavy villain.

“Oh yes, is it though?” he said, with some asperity. “Well, that’s the

way I was going to say it that Friday, but what I did say was, ‘The

strength of brass is in your rugged sinews, but to-morrow afternoon

(you see I got to thinking of a base ball match) some Doman Aronis

breathing sweet perfumery from his curly socks, will pat your bed rawn

and bet his sister sees your blood.’”

“Did they laugh?” we asked.

“Oh no!” he replied, with an inflection that type won’t take. “Oh, no;

they never smiled again; _they_ didn’t. It was when I got down a little

that they felt bad. When he says, ‘If ye are beasts, then stand here

waiting like fat oxen for the butcher’s knife.’ I told them, ‘If ye

be cat fattle, then wait here standing like a butcher for the carving

knife.’ And I got worse and worse until it came to this, ‘Oh, Rome,

Rome, thou hast been a tender mother to me. Thou hast taught the poor

timid shepherd boy, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute note,

to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, even as

a boy upon a laughing girl. Thou hast taught him to drive the sword

through rugged links of mail and brass and warm it in the marrow of his

foe!’”

“Bravo!” we shouted.

“Cheese it,” he said, sententiously; “I didn’t say it just that way. I

said, ‘Oh Rome, thou has ten a binder mother to me. Thou hast taught

the poor boy who never knew a sheep note to glare into the laughing ear

of a fierce Numidian eyeball even as a lyin’ boy at a girl. Thou hast

taught him to mail his ragged brass through swords of link, and marry

it in the warmer of his foe.’”

“And then?” we asked.

“I cried,” he said, “and went down. Everybody was cry’n’. They all had

their faces in their handkerchiefs or behind fans, and were shaking so

it nearly jarred the school-house.”

“You should practice elocution during vacation,” we suggested, “and you

will not fail again.”

He bolted the rest of the green apple, threw his bare feet up in the

air, and walked around on his hands in little circles. “Don’t have no

speakin’ in vacation,” he said.

And we knew that, boy-like, he was going to let the days and the morrow

take care each of its own evils, and we wondered as we came away how

many fathers would recognize their own boys in the hero of this sketch,

and if dear old Fitch, the oldest boy, with the clearest head and the

tenderest heart we ever knew, would remember him.

MR. OLENDORF’S COMPLAINT.

Young Mr. Olendorf used to board at a nice boarding-house out on North

Hill, a little this side of the North Pole. It was a good way out; but

Mr. Olendorf always was fond of pure air and pedestrian exercise, and

as his business hours were easy, he preferred the comforts of a home

in the suburbs to the excitement and clamor of a down-town hotel. A

mild-looking, meek-faced, soft-voiced young man was Mr. Olendorf, as

ever you could wish to see. He rarely complained about anything, and

he never spoke harshly of any one. He would sit on his trunk, when the

family had carried his chair down to the parlor for the convenience of

invited guests; and he would patiently sew on his shirt buttons with

a darning-needle and carpet thread, rather than intimate to his

washer-lady that it wasn’t just the thing to run fine shirts through

a corn-sheller to wash them. Many a time he crawled into a bed that

looked like the crater of an extinct volcano, rather than report the

hired girl for neglecting to make it up. And six times a week he

cleaned his grimy lamp chimney with his fingers, as far as they would

reach, because, he said, in the fullness of his charitable soul, the

girl had so much to do she hadn’t got round to it. And the seventh

night in the week, the lamp being empty and dry as a flat bottle on a

hunting expedition, he would undress by the dim religious light of a

match. He used to wash with a piece of soap four inches long and two

inches thick, as brown as varnish, and so hard it chipped the edges

of the washstand when it was carelessly dropped; and often and often,

when his eyes were full of soap, and he reached out his imploring

hands, groping for the short, thin towel that was seldom there, he

had to feel his way to the bed, abrading his shins against things

that he couldn’t see and didn’t know the names of, and dry his face

and hair on the pillow-slips. But he never murmured. He used to find

bright streaks of red by the dozen in his pomade, and go down to the

breakfast table with his own coal-black locks as dry as good advice,

and marvel at the exceeding glossiness and slickness of the hired

girl’s bright auburn cranium. But he said never a word. And the drouth

used to strike his perfumery bottles once in a while, and leave them as

empty as a lecturer’s head; and he would wind his modest nasal horn in

a handkerchief that smelled like a wash-tub, and when his landlady’s

daughters sailed scornfully past him, perfumed for all the world like

the ghosts of his toilet bottles up stairs, he never looked suspicious,

but only smiled apologetically, as though it was wrong in him to leave

temptation in their way. And once, when he had an attack of cholera

morbus, and sent out for a quart of brandy, and took a tablespoonful

of it, and came back at night to find the bottle very empty, and the

landlady’s husband very full, and lying in Mr. Olendorf’s bed with his

boots on, young Mr. Olendorf only agreed with the landlady that it

was very singular, and that the old man must be ill. So you see Mr.

Olendorf was inclined to be rather peaceable and meek, and when he did

complain there must be some reason for it.

[Illustration: OLENDORF’S COMPLAINT.]

One evening Mrs. McKerrel, his landlady, approached the young man for

the purpose of securing the weekly dole which he paid for the comforts

of a home, and bracing himself up by a desperate effort, Mr. Olendorf,

for the first time in his life, complained.

“It’s the hash, Mrs. McKerrel,” he said plaintively. “It’s too

monotonous. It’s good hash. I can’t say that it isn’t good. It is more

nutritious than chopped straw, and a prize candy package doesn’t equal

it for variety. But I want change. I like hash for breakfast. But when

you give us baked hash for dinner and put boned hash on for supper, and

give us plain hash again for breakfast, and serve stuffed hash again

for dinner, it isn’t a square deal. I believe you impose on us. I never

heard of ‘stuffed hash’ before I came here, and the only difference

between it and the common kind is that it is thinner. The last ‘stuffed

hash’ you gave us you made us eat with steel forks, and it was as thin

as soup, and how is a strong man going to make out a dinner when he has

only twenty-five minutes in which to eat soup with a three-tined fork?

And I don’t think you do the fair thing by us on what you call ‘boned

hash.’ It’s hardly right, Mrs. McKerrel, to make a hash of sardines and

herrings and then call it ‘boned.’ It’s just like eating a shoe brush.

Now there ought to be, once in a while, a change. Not too often, you

know; I don’t expect you to keep a French restaurant for seven dollars

a week, but just often enough to keep the bill of fare from growing

tiresome. Say once every seven years. For instance, you may have

‘boned hash’ to-morrow for dinner, which, it being Sunday, you will.

Well, then, you might have ‘boned hash’ every day until 1882, and then

give us a roast, or a car-spring chicken. And so with ‘stuffed hash,’

and ‘hash a la mode,’ and ‘hash a la Mayonnais,’ ‘Lady Washington

hash,’ ‘hash on toast,’ ‘spring hash, with mint sauce,’ and ‘hash a la

mortar,’ and the other hashes on your bill of fare. By serving them

up once every seven years, you have enough kinds to run clear into a

Centennial.”

The landlady, looking aghast, made an effort to speak, but young Mr.

Olendorf motioned her to silence.

“And if you would speak to Mrs. Muldoon, dear Mrs. McKerrel,” he

went on, “and tell her that, while I am not proud, I do not consider

the hickory shirts which the estimable Mr. Muldoon wears while he is

developing the railroad resources of the United States exactly the

things to wear to church; and even if I had no other scruples against

attending public worship in a section hand’s shirt, torn all the way

across the shoulders and fastened at the neck and cuffs with horn

buttons, Mr. Muldoon’s are five sizes too large for me, and I would

rather she would send me my own. And if you can bribe her to put the

starch in my collars instead of my handkerchiefs, I feel that it

will improve the appearance of my neck, and spare the feelings of a

lacerated and tender nose. No man, Mrs. McKerrel, can wipe his nose on

a sheet of tin and do the matter justice.”

Mrs. McKerrel placed her hands on her hips and stood up, but Mr.

Olendorf begged her to be patient just a moment, while he went on:

“And do you think, if I made a chalk mark on them, that your domestic

could learn the difference between my hair brush and my shoe brush? And

if I made her a little present, might she not be induced to look up

something else to black the stoves with instead of my shoe brush? It is

dreadfully mortifying, Mrs. McKerrel, to black your shoes after night

and get clear in church the next morning before discovering that your

feet are glistening in all the glory of ‘Plumbago’s New Silver Gray

Luster,’ and everybody is laughing at you. And then, Mrs. McKerrel, I

don’t know how my things get so full of snuff. I never use snuff, and I

don’t want to complain, but----”

Here the exasperated matron could restrain herself no longer. Hastily

thrusting her snuff-box back in her pocket, she bade Mr. Olendorf pack.

What he wanted, she said, was a Fifth Avenue hotel for seven dollars a

week, and he couldn’t have it in her house. He was too particular for

such a plain woman as her; if he didn’t like the ways of plain people,

he would have to go where they were nicer. He was too stuck up and

fussy to live in her house. Boarders she had kept, of the very best

people in the highest classes in society, and this was the first time

she had ever heard a word of complaint in her house.

And that is the way Mr. Olendorf happened to call around at the Gorham

and ask Andrews for a nice room, a long ways up. And Andrews gave him a

key and told him to climb till he knew he was lost, and then crawl into

the first bed he saw.

RURAL FELICITY.

Mr. Philetus R. Throop is a well-known insurance agent of Burlington.

He is a perfect steam engine to work, and every Summer, when he feels

about worn out by his labors, he goes out to the farm of his Uncle

George and rests a couple of weeks. He went out last Summer, as usual,

but he only remained a couple of days, and on his return he was heard

to say that he would never, never, never, go into the country again

if he died for a breath of fresh air. The causes which led to this

determination were as follows:

You see, he got a late start on his last trip out into the country,

so that when he reached his Uncle George’s farm it was about nine

o’clock in the evening, and the family, after the good old-fashioned

custom, had gone to bed; not a light was visible about the house. Mr.

Throop got out of the wagon in which a neighboring farmer had brought

him, before they reached the house, so that the noisy wheels would not

apprise any waking member of the fact that a visitor had come. Then

he climbed over the fence and skipped briskly across lots to reach

the house, and give Uncle George and the family a good surprise. Mr.

Throop was not so familiar with the farm as he ought to have been to

attempt such a nocturnal expedition. He had not gone twenty steps

before he stepped into a great ditch, and had time to say all he could

remember of the child’s prayer, “Now I lay me,” before he reached

the bottom, and then had plenty of time to compose and repeat a much

more appropriate and longer one before he crawled out again. After

that he went more slowly, picking his steps with the greatest care,

and straining his eyes as he peered into the darkness to distinguish

noxious objects. But it was very dark, and of course appearances were

unusually deceitful. He would walk around a patch of young clover or

luxuriant turf, his heart standing still the while with the terror of

having so narrowly escaped walking into a great well, and the next

minute he would, after peering ahead of him until his eyes ached and

sparks of fire danced before them, walk with the greatest confidence

and composure into a pile of last year’s peabrush seven feet high,

knocking off his hat, scratching his face and tearing his clothes. And

then such a time as he would have hunting for his hat, and all the

imaginable and unimaginable things that he would pick up in mistake

for that useful article of apparel, can be far better imagined than

described. And once he ran into a fence and nearly put his eye out

on the end of a great stake that was standing out like the point of

a _chevaux de frise_. And just before he got to the barn-yard he was

amazed to discern a creek flowing between him and the fence, and after

vainly hunting in the dark for a bridge, he pulled off his boots and

trousers, and, holding the bundle of clothes high in his arms, waded

across a stubblefield! so dry, every foot of it, that he might have

lighted a match on it anywhere. He thought every tooth he had would

chatter out of his head before he could get into his clothes again.

Then he got into the barn-yard. He knew it was the barn-yard after he

got into it, because in less than a minute after he had climbed the

fence, he fell over a slumbering cow, and before he could get up, the

frightened animal rose to her feet and bucked Mr. Throop over her head.

Then he heard a cow get up just before him, and another just behind

him, and two or three to the right and left, and when a cow with a bell

that could be heard two miles got up and began galloping around the

yard stirring up the rest of the cows, Mr. Throop would have willingly

given up the best risk he had ever taken for a lantern. It wasn’t

safe to stand still, so he took his hat in his hand and went along,

swooping it around him in great circles, shouting “Swoosh! Hi! Hooey!

Scat! Whish! Whoosh! Ste-boy!” as he went along. He only hit one cow

with his hat, however, and the animal thus rudely assailed reached out

and kicked him in the groin and doubled him up, and with a farewell

flourish hit him on the side of the face with the end of a tail so full

of cockle burs that it weighed twenty-seven pounds and knocked him so

flat he thought he never would want to get up again. Then he saw what

he supposed was the house, looming up black and quiet before him, and

he thought his troubles were over. They had just begun.

The next minute he stepped under an open shed where the agricultural

implements had been stored during the Winter. The first intimation he

had of this was by falling over a plow. He scraped both shins, from

the instep to the knee, across the edge of the share, and one of the

handles caught him under the chin and jabbed his head up and back so

suddenly that he heard his neck crack, and the other hunched him in the

floating ribs and knocked enough breath out of him to start a tornado,

in a small way but on a safe basis. He thought he never would get away

from that plow, for he no sooner got one leg out of one entanglement

of draught-irons, coulter, share and handles, than he got the other

one snarled up in a still more hopeless maze of mould-board, clevis,

sole-plate and beam, besides several other parts that he didn’t know

the names of. And when at last he vanquished the plow he lost himself

in a cultivator, and wore himself out trying to crawl through the

gang of coulters. When he got clear of that he fell in with a reaper

and mower, and after prodding his instep into indescribable agony by

thrusting it against the sickle guards as he fell, he caught hold of

the reel, which, of course, immediately whirled with his weight. But

it chanced that quite a large colony of barn-yard fowls had used the

reel as their roosting place during the Winter, and as it whirled

round the amazed and bewildered Mr. Throop rained down upon himself

a terrific tempest of hens and roosters, Brahmas, light Cochins,

ungainly Shanghais, and a variety of other breeds in such a tumult

of squawkings and cacklings, and flappings of wings, and vague but

vigorous clawings of feet, that he didn’t care whether he got out alive

or not, and, indeed, before he got through with the reel he knocked

himself down with its vindictive slats seven times. Then he got away

from that and impaled himself on a horse rake, and fell over the handle

of a fanning mill, and nearly killed himself in the horse-power of a

thrashing machine, and finally got into the house yard, felt his way

to the house, and fell exhausted and speechless against the front

door with a diamond-shaped harrow hanging around his neck. And Uncle

George, awakened by the thump at the door, opened an up-stairs window

and demanded who was there, and receiving no answer shot twice at the

recumbent form of Mr. Throop with his revolver. And when they came down

with lights and opened the door, they were as greatly surprised as Mr.

Throop could have wished.

THE GARDEN OF THE GODS.

The people around Barnes Street well remember when Mr. Middlerib

planted the “garden of the gods.” He bought cartloads of rich earth for

it, and loaded it with patent fertilizers, and ground and stirred and

raked it until the soil was fine as corn meal. The seeds were received

by express, and there wasn’t a package that didn’t have a full college

course of Latin printed on the back, and Mr. Middlerib grew bald trying

to pronounce the fearful and wonderful names of the seed, that were to

make the garden of the gods the wonder of South Hill. When these germs

of magnificent flora were planted the neighbors hung over the fence in

silent admiration and listened to Mr. Middlerib’s botanical lectures,

delivered over every package that was opened. Where the _abolutus

haciedendus microbulus_ was imbedded, he erected a large trestle

immediately, for that impetuous climber to ascend and ramble over. And

where he implanted the _diocantanean psyttachineliensis psoddium_, he

reared a tall, straight stick for that towering mass of blossom and

foliage to shape itself against. He refused the most penetrating hints

for a few seeds of the _bianthus geridian psottoliensis giasticus,

floridens bilthus_, and the care and great gravity with which he

earthed the germs of the _bibulus Burlingtoniensis giganteus_ brought

tears to the eyes of the women. And when the seeds were all planted,

how zealously Mr. Middlerib watched and wrought and fought for their

protection. He would get up in the night to chase the neighbors’ cows

around the house two or three times, and across the garden of the gods

four or five times, and out of the front gate once, and return to his

virtuous couch with profanity in his heart and mud on his feet, and one

slipper down by the cistern and the other in the verbena bed.

All the cut-worms in the State of Iowa appeared to be attending a mass

convention in the garden of the gods. When the tinner came to fix the

spout, he stuck the ladder by which he ascended to the roof in that

sacred ground, and the carpenter who patched the cornice set one of

his trestles in the same place. Every tramp who came to beg, selected

that one favored locality as the only spot in the world where he might

assume the usual humble and respectful position, and rehearse the

stereotyped application for provender. Mr. Middlerib nearly wore out

his voice shouting at people and cows, and railing at cut-worms, and

one Sunday morning he fell asleep in church, and Mrs. M. prodded him

with her parasol just as the minister said, in impressive accents, “And

here we are treading on sacred ground.” “Git off of it!” yelled Mr.

Middlerib, dreaming of the grocer’s boy standing on the g. o. g., and

using his oft-repeated phrase, “Scatter, or I’ll bury ye in it!” And it

raised such a church scandal that Mr. Middlerib was obliged to double

his subscription to keep in good fellowship.

But after manifold troubles, the garden came along beautifully, only

the plants acted a little queer. The climber refused to climb, save

in a horizontal position, but after its own way; and in all general

directions on a horizontal plane it manifested a disposition to crowd

all over that part of South Hill. The _diocantanean psyttachineliensis

psoddium_ scorned the straight stick by which it was expected to brace

itself, and grew out in crooked branches like a garden oak. But the

tender care it received, and the rich earth in which it was planted,

showed what wonders cultivation will do, and when, at last, Mr.

Middlerib, after long and manfully holding out against the declarations

of the envious neighbors and the hints of his wife and daughter, was

obliged to sit down on the porch, one lovely Summer evening, and admit

that he had wasted enough breath to make a tornado, and filled the air

with vociferous and murderous threats and vituperations, and quarreled

with three-quarters of his acquaintances, all for the sake of raising

a jimson weed, it was nevertheless a jimson weed nine feet high, with

blossoms as big as inflated sun-flowers. So he let the jimson weed

stand, and argued with every one who came to the house that, with

sufficient care and proper cultivation, it could be developed into

a fruit-bearing tree. As for the _abolutos haciedendus microbulos_,

as soon as he was morally and botanically certain that it was just

chickweed, Mr. Middlerib one night secretly pulled it up and threw it

away, and ever afterward professed to be heart-broken because some

rascally, envious florist had come up from Keokuk and stolen the

choicest climber in the Mississippi Valley. The _bianthus geridian

psottoliensis giasticus, floridens bilthus_ never showed itself

until toward the latter part of June. Then it thrust up a delicate,

fragile little sprout, drank in a little of the glad free air and pure

sunlight, heard itself called by its full name, and drooped under the

burden and died. The _bibulus Burlingtoniensis giganteus_ came up and

did well. It did not flower very abundantly; but it developed very

marked qualities. The chickens came up and pecked at it, and then laid

them down under the currant bushes and closed their eyes upon this

world of sorrow and mysterious plants. The pigs got into the yard and

rooted a little of it up, and their sudden demise gave rise to the

rumor of the hog cholera, and the air of the hill was vocal for the

next five days with the protests of healthy porkers against the popular

modes of treating the hog cholera, such as boring holes along the spine

with a red hot iron and splitting the ears and tail and rubbing in salt

and cayenne pepper. And after Master Middlerib fooled with it and got

some of it on his face, which immediately swelled up so that nothing

was visible to his eyes, and his eyes were visible to nobody, for

nearly a week, the wonderful plant was pulled up with the kitchen tongs

and thrown into the alley, where the geese of South Hill found it, ate

it, grew fat on it; and came around and asked for more. Nothing that

grows under the heavens can kill a South Hill goose.

There were other plants in the garden of the gods that came up and

grew to maturity and brought forth blossoms each after his kind, but

as they turned out to be various species of rag-weed and dog-fennel,

they were not considered worthy of mention by Mr. Middlerib. But he

is disheartened with scientific gardening, and he only lives now for

one object: to ascertain whether these Latin names are really the

scientific names of those plants which they set forth, or he was

swindled by the traveling seed agent.

A TRYING SITUATION.

There was a time when Mr. Bilderback was almost persuaded to cut

off his pew rent, renounce his religious convictions, and become an

atheist or a pagan, he wasn’t very particular which. He was for many

weeks in great distress of mind, and professed the greatest hatred

of all churches, on general principles. This state of affairs, which

fortunately was not permanent, was brought about by a very annoying,

though perfectly innocent occurrence. One beautiful but rather warm

Sunday morning he was dozing comfortably in his pew, in the church

of which he is one of the main sleepers, when he became aware of an

apparition gliding solemnly down the aisle with a collection basket

in its hand. Mr. Bilderback braced up into an erect posture, cleared

his throat in a ponderous tone of Roman firmness, as one who should

say, “Who’s been asleep?” And as the basket was extended toward him,

he felt in his trousers pocket for his wallet. It wasn’t there, and as

he withdrew his hand, and felt in the other pocket, he felt that the

eyes of the congregation were upon him, and that was all he felt, for

he certainly didn’t feel any pocket-book. He nodded the basket man to

wait a second, and leaned over to the left while he felt in the right

inside pocket of his coat, from which in his growing nervousness he

drew half a dozen chestnuts which rolled over the floor with a rattle

that sounded in his hot ears like the thunders of the Apocalypse,

and made him warmer and more nervous than ever. Then he leaned over

the end of the pew and felt in the other inside coat pocket and drew

out a bundle of letters, a lot of postal cards, a circus ticket,

a photograph of an actress, a funny story printed on a card, a

pocket-comb and a long string, and his face grew so warm his breath

felt like a hot air blast. Then he squared his elbows and went for

his vest pockets, and strewed the pew cushion with quill toothpicks,

newspaper scraps, street car checks, a shoe buttoner, some lead pencil

stubs, and crumbling indications of chewing tobacco, a bit of sealing

wax, a piece of licorice root about an inch long, and three or four

matches. Then he leaned forward and, stung to madness by the smiles

which were breaking out all around that church worse than the measles

in a primary school room, dived into his coat tail pockets, and drew

forth a red silk handkerchief, two apples, a spectacle case, a pair of

dog skin gloves, an overcoat button, and a fine assortment of bits of

dried orange peel and lint. Then he stood up, devoutly praying that an

earthquake might come along and swallow up either him or the rest of

the congregation, he didn’t much care which, and went down into his

hip pockets, from which he evolved a revolver, a corkscrew, a cigar

case, a piece of string, a memorandum book, and a pocket knife. By this

time Mr. Bilderback’s face was scarlet clear down to his waist, and

he was so nervous and worked up that he nearly shook his clothes off,

while the man with the basket couldn’t have moved away, if he had died

for staying. And when Mr. Bilderback, in forlorn despair, once more

rammed his hand into the trousers pocket where he began the search,

the congregation held its breath, and when Mr. Bilderback drew forth

the very pocket-book which he had missed in his first careless search,

and had since all but stripped to find, there was a sigh of relief

went up from every devout heart in that house. But Mr. Bilderback only

dropped into his seat with an abruptness that made the windows rattle,

and registered a mental vow that he wasn’t going to come out to church

again to be made a fool of by a man with a long handled darning basket.

MR. BILDERBACK LOSES HIS HAT.

“No,” Mr. Bilderback said, “it wasn’t.” He put it there last night,

the last thing before he went to bed, he remembered most distinctly.

It wasn’t there now, and he didn’t know who had any business to move

it. Somebody had done it, and he hoped to gracious that it would be the

last time. Somebody was always meddling with his things.

Mrs. Bilderback, coming down stairs with a weary air, asked if he had

looked in the closets?

“Closets?” Mr. Bilderback snarled, “Kingdom of Ireland! Does any sane

man put his hat in the closets when he wants it every time he goes out?

No. I hung it up right here, on this very hook of this particular rack,

and if it had been left alone, it would be there now. Some of you must

have moved it. It hasn’t got legs and couldn’t get away alone.”

Master Bilderback suggested that it wouldn’t be very surprising if

it felt its way along fur a little ways, for which atrocities he was

rewarded with a wild glare and a vicious cuff from his unappreciative

parent. Then Mr. Bilderback said, “Well, I suppose I can walk down town

bareheaded.”

Well, that was the usual formula. Every body knew just what it meant,

and as soon as it was said the family scattered for the regular morning

search. Mrs. Bilderback looked in all the closets with the air of John

Rogers going to the stake, and then she went into an old chest, that

had the furs and things put away in it, and was only opened twice a

year, except when Mr. Bilderback’s hat was lost, which occurred on an

average three times a day. She shook pepper or fine cut tobacco or

camphor out of everything she picked up, and varied her search by the

most extraordinary sneezes that ever issued from human throat, while

ever and anon she paused to wipe her weeping eyes and say that “well,

she never.” Mrs. Bilderback’s search for the lost hat never got beyond

that chest. She would kneel down before it and take the things out one

by one, and put them back, and take them out, and sneeze and sigh, and

wonder occasionally “where the hat could be,” but her search never went

beyond that old moth proof chest.

Miss Bilderback confined her search to the uncut pages of the last

_Scribner_, which she carefully cut and looked into, with an eager

scrutiny that told how intensely interested she was in finding that

hat. She never varied her method of search, save when the approaching

footsteps of her father warned her that he was swinging on his erratic

eccentric in that direction, when she hid the magazine, and picking

up the corner of the piano cover looked under that article with a

sweet air of zealous interest, exclaiming in tones of pretty vexation,

“I wonder where it can be?” And it was noticeable that this action

and remark, both of which she never failed to repeat every time her

father came into the room, had the effect of throwing that estimable

but irascible old gentleman into paroxysms of the most violent

passion, each one growing worse than its predecessors, until they

would culminate in a grand burst of wrath in which he ordered her to

quit looking for his hat. Then she would retire with an injured air

and tell her mother, between that indefatigable searcher’s sneezes,

that “one might wear one’s self out slaving and looking for pa’s hat

in every conceivable place, and all the thanks one got for it was

to be scolded.” Master Bilderback, he helped hunt, too. His system

of conducting a search was to go around into the back yard and play

“toss ball” up against the end of the house, making mysterious

disappearances, with marvelous celerity, behind the wood-pile or under

a large store box, so oft as he heard the mutterings of the tempest

that invariably preceded and announced his father’s approach.

But Mr. Bilderback. His was a regular old composite system of

investigation; it combined and took in everything. He raged through

the sitting-room like a hurricane; he looked under every chair in that

room, and then upset them all to see if he mightn’t possibly have

overlooked the hat. Then he looked on all the brackets in the parlor,

and behind the window curtains, and kicked over the ottoman to look for

a hat that he couldn’t have squeezed under a wash-tub. And he kept up

a running commentary all the time, which served no purpose except to

warn his family when he was coming and give them time to prepare. He

looked into the clock and left it stopped and standing crooked. And he

would like to know who touched that hat. He looked into his daughter’s

work-box, a sweet little shell that “George” gave her, and he emptied

it out on the table and wondered what such trumpery was for, and who

in thunder hid his hat. “It must be hid,” he said. Peering down with

a dark, suspicious look into an odor bottle somewhat larger than

a thimble, “for it couldn’t have got so completely out of sight by

accident.” If people wouldn’t meddle with his things, he howled, for

the benefit of Mrs. Bilderback, whom he heard sneezing as he went past

the closet door, he would always know just where to find them, because

(looking gloomily behind the kitchen wood-box) he always had one place

to put all his things (and he took off the lid of the spice-box), and

kept them there. He glared savagely out of the door, in hopes of seeing

his hopeful son, but that youthful strategist was out of sight behind

his intrenchments. Mr. Bilderback wrathfully resumed his search, and

roared, for his daughter’s benefit, that he would spend every cent he

had intended to lay out for winter bonnets, in new hats for himself,

and then maybe he might be able to find one when he wanted it. Then

he opened the door of the oven and looked darkly in, turned all the

clothes out of the wash-basket, and strewed them around, wondering

“_who_ had hid that hat?” And he pulled the clothes-line off its nail,

and got down on his hands and knees to look behind the refrigerator,

and wondered “who _had_ hid that hat;” and then he climbed on the back

of a chair to look on the top shelf of the cupboard, and sneezed around

among old wide-mouthed bottles and pungent paper parcels, and wondered

in muffled wrath “who had _hid_ that hat?” And he went down into the

cellar and roamed around among rows of stone jars covered with plates

and tied up with brown paper, and smelling of pickles and things in all

stages of progress; every one of which he looked into, and how he did

wonder “who had hid _that_ hat.” And he looked into dark corners and

swore when he jammed his head against the corners of swinging shelves,

and felt along those shelves and run his fingers into all sorts of

bowls, containing all sorts of greasy and sticky stuff, and thumped

his head against hams hanging from the rafters, at which he swore anew,

and he peered into and felt around in barrels which seemed to have

nothing in them but cobwebs and nails; shook boxes which were prolific

in dust and startling in rats, and he wondered “who had hid that _hat_?”

And just then loud whoops and shouts came from up stairs, announcing

that “here it was.” And old Bilderback went up stairs growling, because

the person who hid it hadn’t brought it out before, and saw the entire

family pointing out into the back yard, where the hat surmounted Mr.

Bilderback’s cane, which was leaning against the fence, “just where

you left it, pa,” Miss Bilderback explained, “when we called you into

supper, and it has been out there all night.” And Mr. Bilderback,

evidently restraining, by a violent effort, an intense desire to bless

his daughter with the cane, remarked with a mysterious manner, that “it

was mighty singular,” and putting on the hat, he strode away with great

dignity; leaving his wife and daughter to re-arrange the house.

MIND READING.

One morning, about the middle of the Spring term, Master Bilderback

made his appearance at school with a subdued manner apparent in all

his actions, while a cast of sadness mingled with traces of pleasant

memories overspread his countenance. It was, in short, that general

expression of penitence which people assume after a holiday of more

than usual hilarity. His quiet manner astonished the scholars and

alarmed his teacher, who feared that it was a portent of some unusual

mischief, and kept her eye upon the lad in consequence. He did not

appear to be conscious of the surveillance under which he was placed.

He bent no pins, he chewed no gum, he fired at the adjacent scholars

no projectiles of masticated paper during the morning; no dismal

but subdued cat-calls were heard from the vicinity of his seat; no

grotesque grimaces made his neighbors laugh with uncounterfeited glee;

restful were his feet, and quiet the fingers which were wont to drum on

the desk four minutes out of every five. Master Bilderback was either

in some deep affliction or he was ill. There was something wrong about

him.

It transpired, along toward noon, when Master Bilderback’s spirits

began to rise a little, that he had indeed passed under the rod, with

his father at the other end of it, during the evening previous. The

waters of affliction had gone over his soul, and his back had gone

under the sole of his mother’s slipper. It seems they had company at

Mr. Bilderback’s that evening, quite a large party, in fact, and

the conversation turned on mind reading. The discussion became very

spirited, Mr. Bilderback being the leader of the party which avowed its

belief in mesmeric influences. The usual arguments of learned length

and thundering sound were hurled back and forth, Mr. Bilderback winning

especial distinction by the clearness with which he proved that, in

certain esthetic conditions of the mental and physical systems, the

peculiar psychic forces which always existed in a latent state, were

roused into an active condition; and the action of the intellect upon

the cerebrum was felt in the cerebellum, and transmitted by mesmeric

condition to the candelebra, where the psychomatic transfusion of

the occipital parietis made the Ego as cognizant of the mutation and

genuflexions of the non-Ego, as though the psychic modifications really

impinged upon the same ganglion; and the nerve waves along the ganglia

of the two systems, transmuted by a touch of the hand, were, and could

only be, identical. And Mr. Bilderback’s party said, “Yes; what could

you say to that, now?” And the other party shook their heads and said,

“Yes; but that was only a theory, after all; they would like to see

the hypothesis demonstrated.” And at that critical juncture, Master

Bilderback, who had been an attentive listener, spoke up, in his rough,

horrid style, and declared that “that wasn’t nauthin’;” that they tried

it at school, an’ he could let the boys hide things and then lead them

right to the place where they were hid. The excitement ran high for a

few moments, and Master B. was closely catechised, but he never varied

from his original story; and they finally determined to try him.

Mr. Tweesdle, a young fellow who dotes on poetry and Miss Bilderback,

was the first subject. He announced that he was thinking of a certain

object, and by the way he looked at the mind-reader’s sister,

everybody thought they knew what it was. But Master Bilderback seized

him by the hand, led him out in the hall and up to the hat-rack,

followed by the entire company, and reaching his hand into Mr.

Tweesdle’s overcoat pocket, drew forth a paper bag containing a pound

of sausages, half a dozen eggs, and a couple of rusks, remarking,

“There, that’s what you’re thinking of.” And just at that moment he

certainly was, although he shook his head in an idiotic manner and

laughed feebly, while all the rest of the people never smiled, but only

looked at each other and said, “Why, how funny!”

This sad affair cast a gloom over the entire community for a few

moments, but the people rallied and demanded another test. There

was a general reluctance on the part of the visitors to take a hand

in it, and so Mrs. Bilderback was prevailed upon to be a subject in

the course of scientific experiments. As soon as she had assumed a

pensive expression and announced that her mind was wholly occupied with

one subject, to the exclusion of all other terrestrial things, the

boy grasped her by the hand, and away they went, sailing up stairs,

followed by the entire congregation. The mind-reader marshaled them

into a room, and leading his subject straight to the bureau, drew from

a small drawer a set of false teeth and a bottle of hair dye. Mrs.

Bilderback shrieked, the company looked grave, and some of the ladies

declared to each other that well now, they never did.

There was another brief season of gloom, which was dissipated by

Mr. Bilderback declaring that as neither of the subjects in the two

experiments they had just witnessed had denied the accuracy of the

mind-reader’s judgment, he would submit to the test himself. Great

applause greeted this determination, and as Mr. Bilderback, with a

glance that threatened a massacre if there were any tricks played on

him, placed his hand in that of his son, the congregation rose en masse

to follow where the mind-reader might lead. Master Bilderback placed

his hand against his father’s forehead for a moment; then he placed

it against his own and remained for several seconds in a thoughtful

posture, and then led his reluctant parent, followed by the company,

out of doors, and calling for a lantern, which was provided, they went

into the woodshed, where the mind-reader, despite several stealthy

nudges from his parent, reached his arm behind a pile of hickory knots,

and drew forth a whisky bottle nearly a foot long, flat as a board,

and about half full. Then a shadow fell upon the community that not

even the cordial good nights that were exchanged at the door could

dissipate, and after the footsteps of the last reveler had died away

in the distance, Master Bilderback held two separate private seances

with his parents, the remarkable manifestations of which occasioned the

subdued state of mind and unusual depression of spirits which were so

painfully apparent in the young man the following day.

A SAFE BET.

One night, last Winter, old Mr. Balbriggan, who lives out on Columbia

Street, had occasion to make a journey out to the woodshed to get the

hatchet. It was very dark, and as there was no lantern about the house,

Mr. Balbriggan took a kerosene lamp, and shading it very carefully

with a big tin pan, started out to the woodshed. The wind was rather

uncertain and gusty, and Mr. Balbriggan had some misgivings about his

getting out to the shed without accident; and every time the lamp

flared, his mind misgave him. “I’ll bet a dollar that lamp’ll blow

out,” he muttered when the first gust came, but he shied the tin pan

around with great promptness, and the lamp steadied down. There came

another gust and a bigger flare, and the chances for the lamp going out

improved so decidedly that the old gentleman promptly raised his first

stake. “I’ll bet a dollar and a half,” he muttered, “that lamp blows

out.” Then the wind lulled a little, and as he hurried on toward the

shed it was so quiet that, while he didn’t quite lose all confidence,

he began to hedge a little; “I’ll bet fifty cents,” he said, “it’ll go

out before I get back.” Another gust and a flare. “I’ll bet two dollars

that lamp blows out,” muttered the old gentleman again, chipping a

little higher as the chances seemed to grow better; but again he saved

the light by the timely interposition of the tin pan. “I’ll bet three

dollars,” he cried with great earnestness, as the next gust came,

“this lamp’ll blow out;” but there were no takers and the lamp rallied

again. But a still stronger gust fairly lifted the flame out of the

top of the smoked chimney; and the old gentleman hissed in a hoarse,

suppressed whisper, “I’ll bet five dollars this lamp’ll blow out.”

But it settled down to work once more, and did very well until Mr.

Balbriggan got very close to the woodshed; when the wind rallied and

came at the lamp from two or three directions at once, and the old

gentleman fairly shouted, “I’ll bet ten dollars this lamp’ll blow----”

and just then the door of the woodshed blew violently open, hitting the

lamp and the tin pan, knocking them both out of Mr. Balbriggan’s hands,

and striking the old gentleman a terrible blow in the face that made

him see more lights dancing in the air, for about a second, than even

the lamp could send forth. And while he held his nose with one hand and

groped around with the other to find where he was, there came from the

house door the voice of the eldest juvenile Balbriggan, falling through

the darkness like a falling star: “Raise him out, pa, raise him out;

make it a hundred dollars; you’ve got a dead sure thing on it!”

THE LAY OF THE COW.

Switch engine Louisa, “B., C. R. & M.,”

Was slowing up Front Street about three P. M.,

When the stoker looked out of the window to say,

“There’s a cow going ’cross the t-r-a-c-kay.”

Pensively halted the cow on the track,

Burs on her pendent tail, bran on her back;

Dreaming of Summer, she seemed not to see

The approach of the switch e-n-g-i-n-e.

Once more spake the Stoker, “There she is now,”

“Bully,” the engineer quoth, “for the cow.”

And reversing his engine he cried, “Shoo! Oh, shoo!”

Said the stoker, “Oh, shoo’t the see-oh-doubleyou.”

Shrilly the whistle shrieked for its alarm,

And the stoker threw firewood and coals in a swarm;

But the cow never heeded, nor thought that her star

Was setting at four miles an h-o-u-r.

The switch engine struck her about amidships,

And her Summer dreams met with a total eclipse;

It mangled her carcase, most shocking to see,

And threw her down Front s-t-r-double-e-tea.

Sadly the engineer drew in his head,

And “pulled her wide open,” as onward he sped;

But the stoker smiled gayly, “Old fellow,” said he,

“There’s some cheap porterhouse s-t-a-k-e.”[A]

[A] That isn’t the way to spell porterhouse steak, but the right way

wouldn’t rhyme.

YOUNG MR. COFFINBERRY BUYS A DOG.

People lifted their eyes above their mufflers one raw November morning

as they walked down Jefferson Street, and smiled and grinned, and

laughed even unto hysterical weeping, as they watched the toilsome and

uncertain progress of a patient young man who had bought a dog and was

leading his property home. It was a nice enough kind of a dog, one of

the kind of dogs whose mouth begins back close to the shoulders. It

had dreadfully long legs, this dog, with great knobs of knees, and

its restless tail had a dejected droop, as though the dog was just

heart-broken at the idea of leaving his old home. The young man was

leading the dog along with a very long string, one end whereof was tied

around the dog’s neck. The only trouble with the dog was that he was

young. He had not attained the years of discretion. He couldn’t trot

placidly along thinking of things. He couldn’t walk at his master’s

heels with a face as solemn as though he expected to be sausage before

Thanksgiving Day. He was a nervous, fidgety, inquisitive dog, and he

tried to read all the signs, and crawl under all the wagons, and dive

between every body’s legs as he went along. And the first thing he

knew, he had a contract on hand that was much too big for him, and he

was just about crazy over it, for he wasn’t the dog to give up, if

he was young, and he stuck to his work like a Trojan. And this was

what made people laugh. The young man who was leading him had just

lifted his hat to some lady acquaintances who were passing when the

dog, looking up, misunderstood the motion and thought his master

was going to hit him a diff with that hat. With the natural instinct

of self-preservation, the shy, timid young thing dashed between the

young man’s legs and ran to the length of his tether; then he gave a

terrified howl and darted back in the opposite direction, going outside

the young man’s right leg. Then, with a frightened yelp it sprang back

between the legs again, circled around and came down outside the left

leg. Then it ran rapidly around the young man, dived through his legs

again and ran around him once and a half in an opposite direction,

and his last maneuver closed the performance, for it wound the dog

completely up, with his frightened face laid close against the young

man’s knee. Mr. Coffinberry blushed to his ears, and replacing his hat,

began the task of extricating himself from the toils that artful dog

had cast around him. But the animal’s confidence was not yet entirely

restored, for at every movement of Mr. Coffinberry’s hands, he squirmed

and writhed and pulled back on the string until he was choked, and

coughed and gasped in a manner most terrifying to the people not

thoroughly acquainted with the symptoms of hydrophobia, and the young

man was naturally as badly frightened, when these paroxysms became very

lively, as was the dog itself. It was fifteen minutes before the snarl

was disentangled. Then before they had gone half a block further, that

dog, after having rushed into and been forcibly, and in some instances

rather petulantly, dragged out of every doorway on the line of march,

incontinently shot down a cellar grating, where he was immediately

clawed and scalped by a cat as big as a soap box, and was also nearly

garroted by his master drawing him up out of the cellar by the cord,

for all the world as though he was a well bucket. About thirty steps

further on, the dog ran between a clergyman’s legs, got frightened

and ran around him once and then dived between his master’s legs, then

rushed out toward the curb stone, but changing his mind, circled back

and scooped in a blushing school teacher, and then gazed upon the

mischief he had wrought, with hideous howls. The bystanders thought

they never could get out of that entanglement. The minister declared

alternatively that “he never did” and moreover that “well he never;”

the blushing school teacher remarked “good gracious,” and suggested

also, “dear me,” and, furthermore, “well, now;” and the young man said

something about the dog being damp, which was highly improbable as

the morning was very raw. By dint of a great deal of persuasion and

pulling and hauling, however, in which they were greatly assisted by

the dog, the unhappy trio were finally separated and went their way,

making ineffectual efforts to look unconcerned. Then the dog wrapped

himself up around a lamp-post; then he got through the hind wheel of a

grocer’s wagon five or six times, back and forth, around a different

spoke every time, while his master was talking to the grocer, and the

latter drove off before the young man noticed what arrangements his

dog had concluded with the wheel, and Jefferson Street was edified by

the spectacle of a dog wound up to a wagon wheel and revolving rapidly

with it, while a young man of pleasing address ran alongside the wheel

and added his agonized appeals to the half-stifled wails of the hanging

pup. They got the wagon stopped and got the pup loose, and the young

man, wearied with the long struggle, resolutely turned toward the

store, and walked rapidly away, the unhappy dog lying prone on his

back, gasping and pawing the air, while the boys who witnessed the

strange procession made the welkin ring with cries of “Dog’s a chokin!

mister, yer dog’s a chokin!” But young Mr. Coffinberry knew that so

long as his dog was helplessly sprawled on his back he couldn’t wrap

the inhabitants of Burlington up in perspiring, distracted groups, so

he kept on the even tenor of his way, and when he finally untied the

string from the animal’s neck and turned him loose in the store, there

wasn’t so much hair on that dog’s back as would make a tooth brush.

A MODERN GOBLIN.

A dreary, cheerless Christmas Eve. The dead hour of day, when the pale

twilight falls over the earth, still and colorless as a shroud. Down

the long vistas of deserted streets but here and there the feeble rays

of some struggling light gleams through the gray twilight, pale as the

glitter of a jewel on the brow of death. Across the dull waste of sky

the ghostly clouds fly before a piercing wind, which whirls and tears

their edges into fluttering fringes. The gloaming fades slowly and

almost imperceptibly into night. Away back from the town, out on the

bleak hillsides, the leafless trees toss their bare arms, gaunt shapes

against the pallor of the sky, the swaying branches answering their

mocking shadows, dancing like specters on the frozen ground; while the

withered leaves rustle like very shudders.

The hour, neither light nor darkness, neither day nor night, that,

with its weird, indescribable magic, draws you from the cheery grate

to press your face against the cold window, and dream out into the

gray light, peopled with specters and visions--often grotesque, but

never merry--that come trooping from every shadow. Comes a rosy little

face, framed in tangled tresses--ah, long, long unfolding years must

roll back to take you to the time when the laughing eyes looked into

yours; to-night you remember--dear child--the dimpled hands were

crossed on the pulseless breast, when you were a boy; and the cheerless

winter landscape, the dreary hills of snow, and the leafless forests

stretch away, mile after weary mile, between your home and where the

Christmas winds sigh plaintive monodies over her little grave. There

comes a thoughtful, earnest face, manly and noble; a playmate of your

boyhood, a college classmate and friend; the man who stood for your

ideal of all that is brave and true, and virtuous and generous. As you

look at it, you remember, to-night, that when you saw the real face,

so little time ago, it was worn and old and haggard, and stamped with

the leprous mark of vice. You shudder at the recollection; but the

pleading look of the vision goes to your heart as it fades away; and

other faces, long forgotten, crowd before you. One, furrowed with marks

of patient suffering and care, with silver bands in the brown hair

drawn so smoothly away from the brow, mother-love glistening in the

tender eyes, mother-love in the quivering, heart-reaching eloquence of

the tremulous lips, mother-love in the caressing gesture of the gentle

hands--what wonder that it lingers long, and fades only when you crush

the burning tears that blind your eyes and veil the vision from your

sight? And comes one sweeter, dearer than all--your heart throbs more

quickly as you see a shadow rise in the deepening twilight--a face

glowing with blushes and wreathed in smiles; a face that shone into

your life like sunshine, in its bright springtime days; a face that has

remained constant while everything else has changed--your old heart

grows tender and young with dear recollections, and you thank God that

although years have set their mark upon this dear vision, it is still

yours, loving, faithful, and powerful to bless and charm in every

mood and at all times. It is gone; and looming through the deepening

shadows another form of familiar presence rises before you. The silvery

tones of memory-bells chime like a Christmas choral through the bleak

wind shaking so angrily the noisy shutters. It is the milkman, and he

jangles all your sweet dreams out of tune, sending the ghosts your

retrospect has raised back to the shadowy past. And as your visions

disappear, you dismally watch the female vassals of the neighborhood

sallying forth in answer to the tinkling summons, bearing all possible

manner of squatty tinware and corpulent yellow bowls, in which to

receive lawful but attenuated measures of that peculiar aqueous fluid

of cerulean hue with which, under the ghastly appellation of “cream,”

our best society dilutes its table beverages. And when this amusement

ceases to be longer interesting, you leave the draughty window and seek

the more congenial companionship of the black, close-shut gas-burner,

which out of respect to your conceit and the conventionalities of the

Christmas time, we have designated a “cheery fire-place,” with an

incipient cold in your otherwise empty head.

For the shadows have beckoned and reached to each other, and joined

their giant hands, and danced until the light is frightened away. In

heavier volumes rolls the black smoke from every chimney, indicating

that the estimable and respectable business men of the city, having

left their clerks with orders to save gas and not waste the coal, and

to close the store only when the last lingering, possible chance of

securing one more belated customer has faded into hopelessness, are

now at home, enjoying the unspeakable luxury of heaping the stove with

coal their wives have carried in, and driving the other members of the

family to madness by monopolizing the privilege of poking the fire.

Gas lights twinkle in the streets, for the faithful almanac in the gas

company’s office has been mislaid, and they do not know there will be a

moon quite late in the morning. A ruddy glow of firelight and lamplight

streams out into the gathering darkness when a door is opened, men are

hurrying home, their faces averted, and their bodies bowed against the

howling wind, or else scudding briskly before it. The city was hurrying

home to enjoy its Christmas Eve in the bosom of its several families,

and to scold the children and pack them off to bed, if they romped and

made too much noise. Everybody knows what city it was, so there is no

use wasting time describing it. It was just the same old city, only

they had strengthened the little brick house down below the corner

where the blacksmith lived, with a coat of whitewash. Just the same old

city.

And everybody knows the hill on the street, where it turns to wind up

the bluff and go to the rich folks’ houses on top of the long hill

that stretches around behind the town like a great horse shoe, and

looks down on all the business, and bustle, and noise, and hurry, and

work, and fatigue that have made the city so rich and powerful. And

just at the time we were speaking about a gentleman was making devious

headway up this hill, just as the street leaves the business of the

city and goes scrambling up to the quiet and rest on top of the hill. A

discouraged looking gentleman, who seemed to have begun his Christmas

at the wrong end, and so got nearly through with it before it had

really commenced. The gentleman’s Napoleonic head was covered, part

of the time, with a glossy silk tile, which art had shaped into the

fashionable, uncomfortable cylinder which adorns the caputs of our Best

Young Men, but accident, oft recurring, and too many vigorous slappings

on and pattings down by the officious but ill-directed zeal of many

friends, and too frequent steppings on by the owner as the last means

of checking its mad career in a race with the wind, had graced this

glossy cylinder with many alternate elevations and depressions, giving

it that corrugated effect so attractive, natural, and useful in the

washboard and concertina, but very repugnant and ungraceful in the silk

hat. The gentleman’s eccentric style of buttoning his overcoat, three

holes over the same button, lent an air of abstraction to his general

appearance, while his knitted brow told of intense mental conflict and

exertion. He made little forays from the sidewalk to the middle of

the street, returning to his pathway by devious and angular ways, as

though striving to baffle some unseen pursuer. From time to time he

made vicious, impulsive, startled clutches at the streaming ends of

his necktie, fluttering in the blast, which he regarded with a vague

uncertain terror, and, when he had seized them, he laughed in hollow,

hysterical accents. The smell of coffee was heard in the distance as

he passed, and ever and anon, as the restless earth raised itself in

precipitous terraces before him, he lifted his feet high in air and

with lofty steps essayed to scale the treacherous mirage. He paused in

his circuitous progress to shake hands with the last friendly lamp-post

on that thoroughfare, expressing his confidence in that faithful

municipal lighthouse as a “goo’role feller,” who was, under any and

every possible combination of circumstances, “all ri’.” At times he

felt for his hat with both hands, and having secured a firm grip upon

its uncertain brim, he removed it from his head with great caution, and

swinging it violently in the air, proceeded with great enthusiasm and

heartiness to “hurrah for” somebody, but invariably forgot who, when

he came to the name, and contented himself with assuring himself that

that was “al’ri’,” after which with gravity he felt for his head, found

it, and with much deliberation got the hat up on top of it, generally

sideways or upside down, and with great physical effort, crushed and

pulled it on. At length, having parted company after affectionate and

prolonged adieus, with the last friendly lamp-post, the young gentleman

loudly announced that he was a “total wr--hic!--creck” and proceeded

furthermore to declare that he would not and could not by any means be

induced to seek the shelter of his mother’s roof again until smiling

morn should hail and deck the hills with gold, and the rosy-fingered

hours should herald the coming of the god of day. And singing this

true statement in a rich baritone, a kind of a wheelbarrow tone, in

fact, possessing more volume and hoarse wheeziness than we would

admire in Nilsson’s chest tones, he made a vigorous but ineffectual

effort to fall up the hill, and angrily ejaculating, “Ju know who yer

pushin’?” he shot over the curbstone with frenzied gestures that seemed

to proceed at least from ten pairs of legs, and disappeared in the

gloom of the gutter, where he lay, and whence his stertorous breathing

startled the nervous passers-by.

Had the fallen man kept on the uneven tenor of his way a little

farther he would have encountered a mysterious being that would have

transformed his snores into sounds of deeper intonation. The street,

where it turned and led up the hill, was not a cheerful one. On the

west side the bluff rises abruptly as a wall, and on the opposite side

it sinks away into a dark, gloomy ravine, that has an uncanny look at

the best of times, and the sidewalk is provided with a wooden railing,

to keep careless or belated passengers from plunging down the hillside.

A little stream winds along the ravine, endeavoring, in a despairing

kind of way, to find its way to the river, which it never does. It

starts, but from the time the city was first settled there has been no

record that the little stream ever got clear through; nobody knows what

becomes of it, where it goes to; but certain it is, that all trace of

it is lost before it gets half-way to any where. But we have naught to

do with this forlorn little country brook that comes purling through

pleasant meadows, and bubbling over white pebbles, and wrangling around

great bowlders, to get bewildered and lost in the entangling mazes of

the drains and gutters and sewers and culverts of the city.

Seated on the railing of the sidewalk was an apparition of far less

cheerful mien than the gentleman who, when we left him, had just

wrapped the curbstone about him and laid down to snore the Christmas

hours away. This figure wore a snow-white mantle, much too airy and

summery for the season and very decidedly out of style, which fell from

his angular shoulders in graceful folds, a portion of its light tissue

being folded over his osseous head after the most conventional style of

his class. As he swung his legs carelessly to and fro, they struck the

lower boards of the railing with a strange rattling sound like muffled

castanets, and his manner of whistling “Down Among the Dead Men,”

under his breath in that weird, ghostly place, with the bluff rising

black and abrupt before him, and the ravine lying deep in impenetrable

shadow behind him, had that awful touch of the supernatural in it that

would make one’s blood run cold to contemplate. A ghostlier ghost never

chose a ghostlier time or place for his ghastly recreations.

He ceased his hollow whistling and stilled his nervous legs as he heard

approaching footsteps on the sidewalk, and dropped from his easy perch

on the railing as a young man and a lovely maiden came toward him,

toiling up the slope down which the December zephyr roared and swept

into a fury that would make an Ulster overcoat feel sick. The young

man’s arm was wound tenderly about his companion’s shrinking seal-skin

cloak, while he hoarsely whispered words into her ears, which were rosy

with the exhilarating influence of twenty-eight degrees below zero. The

ghost stepped in front of them.

“Excuse my hoarseness,” he said, with a winning smile that extended

over the entire width of his finely-chiseled face, “but I had the very

disagreeable misfortune to have my throat cut in this exceedingly

romantic spot about a half a century since, and my voice has since been

affected to such an ex----”

The very wind paused in its noisy bluster to listen to the wild shrieks

that were piercing the darkness like acoustic arrows, and the rapid

patter of two pairs of Arctic over-shoes that were pounding the bosom

of the frosty earth far down the hill, away from the shadow of the

bluff, away from the dreadful blackness of the ravine, in the direction

of the gleaming street lamps of the city.

The ghost leaned upon the railing and sighed as he said:

“This was not the style of responding to an apology when I dwelt among

men. Perhaps my voice, which I have not used before for fifty years,

has that in its mouldy accents which is disagreeable, startling, and

possibly repulsive, to mortal ears. I will modulate my intonation.”

He paused to observe the figure of a portly man, looming vaguely

through the night, as, with many asthmatic puffs, the well-fed citizen

essayed to beat up the hill against the wind.

“He looks,” said the specter, musingly, “very much like an honest old

settler I used to know, who sold whisky to and stole furs from the

Indians, the year after I first came to what is now this city.”

The panting citizen came alongside and was passing by, when the ghost

dropped his bony hand noiselessly in the hollow of his arm.

“A thousand pardons, my dear sir,” he began, “but I observe a most

extraordinary resemblance in----”

“Oh-H-H-H-h, Lord!”

And again the ghost was alone. As the echoes of the excited and grossly

misapplied remark of the citizen died away in the mocking echoes of

the dreary solitudes, the ghost walked across the street and carefully

examined the face of the bluff, in which direction the portly mortal

had made his unceremonious and abrupt exit.

“No,” the specter remarked, after a critical inspection, “it is very

evident that he did not plunge through the hill; he certainly ran over

its summit. The celerity with which he accomplished this undertaking

at his time of life, and in his condition of superfluous flesh too,

smacks almost as much of the marvelous to me as I did to him. I would

be willing to bet my boots, now,” he added, with a ghastly wink at his

bare feet, “that the portly old party can not come here to-morrow noon

and get over that hill inside of twenty-five minutes.”

“Passenger travel on this street,” he continued, resuming his station

on the sidewalk, “is livelier than it was in my time. As I remember,

the two gentlemen who performed the surgical operation on my windpipe,

which has so disagreeably affected my voice, had to wait here for me

five hours in the cheerless gloom before my other business engagements

permitted me to come along and make an involuntary and unwilling third

in their interesting little surprise party. And I sat on a stump near

this very spot, and watched my lifeless remains nearly two days before

the coroner found them and gave them the customary inquest with a

fearful and wonderful verdict, followed by Christian burial. Yes, yes,

the village has been prosperous since then, and now--but soft, a young

man--a lover, too, or I’m no ghost. I will befriend him and he will

love me.”

A goodly young man he was indeed, as ghost or girl would wish to see.

Torture racked his soul when, at every step, his dainty boots, a size

and a half too small, touched the ground. And even the snowy expanse

of linen cuffs, weighted with moss-agate sleeve buttons, failed to

conceal the fact that his flame-colored kids would not button. Though

the piercing wind chilled him to the very marrow, his overcoat was

opened and thrown back from his throat to display the blue necktie that

graced his paper collar. The elaborate and painful costume betrayed his

errand. You might wring bergamot out of the air when he passed along,

and there was jockey club on his handkerchief, and his breath smelled a

little of sozodont, some of trix, and a great deal of something else.

The ghost looked after him, as he passed by, with as much friendly

admiring interest as he could throw into his rather open countenance,

and then gathering his robe about him followed swiftly and silently

at the limping heels of the nice young man, who toiled painfully but

very patiently and exquisitely properly up the hill until he reached

the summit of the grade, and pausing before a mansion of pretentious

appearance, proceeded to investigate the ever changing mysteries of a

front gate.

Properly constructed, the front gate is more fearfully and wonderfully

made than the architect who designs or the carpenter who builds it.

No other created or manufactured thing in the whole wide universe can

equal or rival it for original perversity and malignant obstinacy.

A patient man, whose soul is melting within him from chronic and

exaggerated meekness, will fall from grace and relieve his tortured

soul in a burst of giant powder profanity after fifteen minutes’

struggle with a front gate, and then he will shower a tempest of abuse

upon the unknown man who contrived such a diabolical and outrageous

gate, and he will cease to struggle with it and will climb over the

fence and disintegrate his raiment on the pickets, and abrade his

cuticle all the way down his back as he slides off, and then his soul

will be tossed into a very sirocco of passion and mortification when

he sees the dog of the mansion come trotting along and open the gate

with a simple push of his nose. Or a woman, full of a woman’s love

and yearning tenderness, will take hold of a gate and tug at it, and

pull and haul and jerk until she nearly drags the solid posts up by

the roots, and when all the blood in her system is boiling in the top

of her head, and her eyes are starting from their sockets, and she

dissolves in tears of utter, abject wretchedness and rage because

she is debarred by virtue of her sex from the ecstatic privilege of

swearing at the gate and the pirate who made it, a grinning boy will

open the barrier by merely pulling it the other way. Men with real,

living ideas, and lofty aspirations, and soaring ambitions, and grand,

illimitable thoughts, swelling and groaning and throbbing in heart and

brain, have stood before an orthodox front gate and manipulated its

fastenings, moving that piece this way and this one that, and all of

them the other, until the pot-metal securities have assumed the vexed

and perplexing varieties and dimensions of a Chinese puzzle with the

delirium tremens or a Centennial election table. And then, when at

last with a despairing groan he lets go of it, and raises his hands

to heaven to call down its righteous judgment upon the unregenerate

mocker who made that gate, it slowly swings open by its own weight, and

the distressed Christian discovers to his unspeakable amazement that

he has had it open twenty times within the last fifteen minutes. And

all these troubles are magnified after night. Hook and staple connect

the swinging gate and the immovable post where hook and staple there

were none before. The most trifling and ordinary bolt has a way of

acquiring a double action after dark, so that whatever is loosed at one

end is immediately fastened up as tight as a candidate at the other.

Nails, too, appear, driven in the post immediately above the latch,

and finally, when all other ties are sundered, lo, a strap hugs the

whole structure in its binding embrace. It is a work of ten minutes to

find the buckle, and when found it is a knot, tied when the strap was

wet, and now firmer in its clinging folds and more intricate in its

appalling entanglements than the famous knot which Gordius of Phrygia

tied in his chariot harness, a knot which baffled even the sublimest

efforts of the Chicago divorce lawyers. Even the simplest form of a

gate latch known to man, composed of a round hole in a post into which

a stick is thrust athwart the gate, is a snare, a vanity, a vexation of

the spirit and a mortification of the flesh; for no living man ever

opened a strange gate of this genus that the stick did not come out

with a jerk, rasping the abraded knuckles along the rude edges of the

pickets.

With a gate which presented, or rather concealed, and successively

developed, like masked batteries, all the modern combinations of

baffling elements and inventions, the young man has all this time

been expostulating. A good young man, for while he has been laboring

with that remorseless gate with all the intensity of purpose and

earnestness that fires the blood of youth, he has only relieved his

impatient swelling soul by saying from time to time that “he _would_ be

dad binged,” once or twice varying the tense, as the future suddenly

seemed to break upon him with all the fullness of time, to declare

that he _was_ “dad binged,” and several times, as though conscious of

some degree of uncertainty attending the whole matter, devoutly hoping

that, at some indefinite time in the vague hereafter, he _might_ be

“dad binged.” Once he passed suddenly to the imperative and passive,

appealing to some unknown quantity to “dad bing the dad binged old

gate,” a confusion of mood, tense and voice that was absurd, and

even the ghost, which stood in the porch of the mansion watching his

movements with that all-absorbed interest which visitors from another

world display in terrestrial matters, shook his head gravely, as if

doubting the advisability of a needless waste of power in dad binging

that which was already declared dad binged. But the ghastly visage

relaxed in a grim smile, as with one last tremendous effort, the

adolescent raised the barrier from its fastenings, hinges and all, and

fell forward to the gravel walk with the fiendish gate clasped in his

arms, reaching the ground in a rattling chorus which roused all the

dogs this side of the moon.

Disengaging himself from the chaos into which the gate had fallen,

the young man reached the porch with a halting step, and as he stood

near the door, brushing gravel off his clothes with his tattered kids,

the ghost gathered his bustle and train about him, slid deftly through

the key hole, and flattened himself against the door on the inside.

The tinkle of the bell had scarcely sounded in the hall when a light

footstep was heard in echo to its clamor, and a beautiful young girl

hastened to the door. She opened it, but the ghost stepped before her

and faced the smiling, blushing, bowing young man, threw his gaunt arms

around his neck, and in a hollow whisper began,

“Darling! I have watched so long for----”

A terrific yell rang through the corridors like almost any other yell

would ring under similar circumstances. A rush of hasty feet along the

gravel walk, a stumble, a crash and a dismal howl at the site of the

fallen gate; then the dying echoes of fleet, pattering footsteps in the

distance, and then silence, dispossessed of her curtained throne for

one brief moment, resumed her noiseless reign, and the smiling ghost,

after a vain effort to dig himself in the ribs, chuckled with dismal

jollity and hid his shadowy form in the recesses of the porch.

The young girl stood spell-bound, gazing out in the direction of

her vanished lover, and shaking her lovely head in mute, astonished

negations, in response to the hurried and excited inquiries of the

family, who came swarming into the hall in all possible stages and

degrees of amazement and terror, propounding with great volubility all

the conundrums which would naturally suggest themselves in consequence

of such an astounding and unheralded and unprovoked outburst of human

voice.

“I cannot imagine what did ail him,” she said at length, when her stern

father, in mild reproof, had laid his heavy hand upon her rounded

shoulder, and oscillated her lithe form to and fro until her back hair

was in her hands, and the floor was strewn with hairpins and samples

of curls, thick as autumnal leaves and one thing and another strew the

brooks in Vallambrosa and vicinity. “I opened the door, and before I

could say ‘Good evening,’ he opened his mouth to its fullest extent,

and with a look of horror, fled from my presence, leaving no token save

an amount of noise altogether incommensurate with his size. I can’t

imagine what he could have seen to affect him so. I was afraid at first

that I hadn’t rubbed the pearl powder out of my eyebrows, but I had.”

Every member of the convention offered a suggestion or an explanation

of the mysterious affair, but they were all overruled by paterfamilias,

who, venturing the gruff opinion that the young man was in the habit

of placing himself exterior to sundry and various decoctions dispensed

at those retail drug stores which are, by law, closed on Sundays, and

had merely incurred that peculiar form of mental distemper in which the

patient keeps a private menagerie on exhibition in his boots, drove his

wondering family back to the parlor.

But youth is buoyant. Its sorrows are transient and its tears are April

rain, flecked with the sunshine even while they fall; its fears are

short lived as its sorrows, and die away when the thought or scene that

gave them birth is gone. So he who flew from the hideous shadow that

had veiled the fairy figure of his love from his fond gaze, blushed

in the darkness at his nervous fancy, and re-arranging his wardrobe,

retraced his steps with more of that native grace and innate dignity

peculiar to the young man of the nineteenth century, than he had

displayed while making his presence seldom. Again he passed the wreck

of the demolished gate, and once more he rang the bell, and listened

for the echoing footfall, while the attentive specter came and stood

demurely at his elbow.

“You horrid boy,” murmured a sweet voice through the keyhole, “I

have a great mind not to let you in. What made you act so perfectly

ridiculous?”

“Dearest,” the young man said, “it was a foolish, horrible fancy; I

will never frighten you again.”

“It was perfectly dreadful,” she replied, “horribly, dreadfully awful.

How could you be so perfectly horridly dreadful? But you may come in

this time.”

And with coquettish deliberation she opened the door, to see the ghost,

bending his smiling gaze upon her colorless face and staring eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, in hollow tones, “since you insist upon it, I

will come----”

“Oo-oo-_ee_-E-E-E-E!”

And thump! She dropped to the floor with a velocity and abruptness

that even astonished her ghost. Dumb with amazement, her lover stood

gazing at her form, lying prone upon the new hall carpet, emitting a

series of long-drawn shrieks. He recoiled, as again the members of

the family came pouring and buzzing out of their rooms, like hornets

from their domicile on a swaying apple tree bough, jarred rudely by

the unconscious granger’s towering head. The angry father caught a

glimpse of the trembling, half-stupefied, and thoroughly mystified

youth, standing near the doorway, appealingly and timorously offering

his explanations. The parent, with a few hurried words, disappeared up

stairs. Quickly he returned, bearing in his hands a ponderous shot-gun,

at the sight of which the young man, without pausing to explain,

fled quite as precipitately, and with as little ceremony, as he had

sauntered away from the embrace of the ghost.

“Because,” he remarked to the wind, which was vainly trying to keep

pace with his flying movements as he cleared the fallen gate with a

bound, and waltzed airily down the road, as though tight boots were a

vision and an unreal dream, “because the old man appears to be a trifle

impatient to-night, and I would not cross him in his sadder moods. He

might do that to-night for which to-morrow I might mourn.”

And deftly passing from twelve to fifteen linear feet of solid earth

beneath each foot, oft as he raised it from the ground, with swift

evasion he transferred himself to healthier climes and more congenial

scenes.

The indignant father, meanwhile, had stepped out on the porch, and

holding his warlike weapon a-port, peered angrily into the gloom for a

glimpse of the flying figure, whose distant, echoing footsteps he could

faintly hear.

“Thou art so dear,” he said, “and yet so far.”

To him the silent ghost approached. Standing by his unconscious side,

the specter leaned his bony elbow upon the mortal shoulder, resting his

hollow cheek upon his attenuated hand. Then, with a graceful motion

and an easy gesture, of which a ballet dancer might be proud, he drew

aside the lower portion of his drapery, disclosing to view a pair

of emaciated shins of which a ballet dancer would most certainly be

ashamed. Crossing one of these specimens of anatomical curiosities in

front of the other, he rested the bended limb upon the toes, and stood

thus for a moment, in that elegant and charming pose so much affected

by our best young men at the opera and theater, who place themselves on

exhibition for the untaught multitude upon every possible occasion.

For a few brief moments he stood thus, wrapped in admiration of his

refined and elegant appearance, then dropping his face and turning it

until his breath, if he had any, would have swept the cheek of his

unconscious companion, he said:

“Let me entreat you, dear sir, to do nothing rash. Let me implore you

to put by your murderous weap----”

Bang! bang! Two loads of death-dealing buckshot perforated the roof of

the porch, and the howl of an elderly voice mingled with the crashing,

discordant echoes that rose clattering through the darkness. The slam

of a door, and the rush and scramble of many feet succeeded, followed

by the clanging of locks and bolts; the subdued hubbub of many voices

could be heard, detailing in many exaggerated phrases, extravagant

narratives, and with a smile of grim amusement playing across his

expressive features, like a telegraphic line from one ear to the other,

the specter learned, as he listened at the keyhole, that while the

master of the house had been standing on the porch, a pale blue light

suddenly clove the night, accompanied by a sulphurous smell, in the

midst of which appeared, rising out of the ground, a colossal body with

five heads, and with hideous gashes yawning in its throats, from which

the welling blood flowed down, and splotched and streaked the long

white robe with horrible carmine stains. Its many eyes, the patrician

said, glared like burning coals, and its hair twined and wreathed

itself in fantastic shapes, like living serpents.

The specter assumed a thoughtful look as he listened to these terrible

revelations.

“It is barely possible,” he said, “that I am a maligned apparition.

From his vivid powers of imagination, and a slight tendency to

exaggerated word coloring in narration, one would take this elderly

party for one of the gifted prevaricators who deal in political

prophecies in the presidential year. I may not be a very handsome

ghost, but I do most profoundly believe that this portly Ananias who,

I see, is just now leaving the room to learn how his daughter is coming

on, has most foully traduced my personal appearance. And while there

is no one in this apartment save that comfortable-looking old lady,

who has been terrified and mystified into motionless silence, I will

quietly step in and settle this vexed question by consulting the pier

glass.”

With that graceful, easy manner which is characteristic of a well-bred

ghost, he slid through the keyhole, and a moment later, stood singeing

his bloodless shins before the blazing grate, while he made a critical

inspection of his visage in the mirror. After studying the picture for

some moments in silence, he stroked his chin with a complacent air

while a smirk of self satisfaction played over his features.

“Any mortal,” he murmured, “who would flee in terror from such a face

as that; any man who could detect any thing like an unearthly glare

in those hollow eyes; any creature who can find it in his heart to

announce the discovery of hair on that head, or find a trace of blood

about that figure, from throat to heels, is a lunatic, and should be

looked after. Be looked after,” he added, in an absent way, “Looked

after. Looked after.”

“And,” he continued, after a few moments’ deliberation, “I should like

to be appointed to look after him. He would then have a more faithful

conservator than was ever appointed by a county court. I would interest

and amuse him, and strive to divert his mind from the troubles which

appear to have so disordered his imagination and distorted his vision

and faculties of observation. I would keep him in a state of constant

mental activity. I would help him around, and I would make myself

useful to this family in a variety of ways. For instance, I would make

this old gentleman so distrustful of that long walk up the hill after

dark that he never would stay down town late at night, and could not be

induced to attend lodge, or ‘just step down to the post-office’ after

supper. I would imbue his very nature with such an utter abhorrence for

dark places that he would never kiss the hired girl behind the cellar

door. Never again; ne-ver, ne-ver. I would reform this man, and make

this family happy, and this house should resound with manifestations of

excitement and exclamations of astonishment, and indications of very

dubious merriment, as it were. I see much good in this virtuous and

happy project, and I will cultivate the acquaintance of this excellent

lady of the mansion, convince her of the necessity of a protector for

herself and her family, and carry my plans into operation. I have a

conviction that this would be a most comfortable house to haunt.”

He stepped to the side of the matron, and laying his icy fingers

against her cheek to arouse her attention, and holding his throat shut

with the other hand to prevent his voice escaping prematurely at the

aperture which has been previously referred to, said, in a louder voice:

“You will pardon the abruptness of my speech, my dear madam, but I deem

it my duty to inform you that it is my firm belief this part of town

is haunted. Yes, ma’am, haunted. I shouldn’t be surprised, indeed, if

there was a ghost somewhere in this house this very minute. In fact I

have every reason for believing----”

Thus far his auditor had preserved such a respectful silence that

the speaker believed she was listening with rapt attention, and he

fondly hoped that he had at last found a friendly, appreciative

gossip who would not interrupt his remarks with ill-timed applause

before he was half through. Looking at her face, however, at this

moment, the expression of her countenance was such as chilled

him with disappointment. She was not splitting the night air with

blood-curdling, discordant shrieks, it is true, but it evidently wasn’t

her fault. Her eyes had left their sockets and were standing out on

her cheek-bones with nothing particular to do except to stare at each

other across the top of her nose, each with an expression of blank

amazement at seeing the other there. Her mouth was alternately closing

with sudden jerks and distending with spasmodic gasps; noiseless, but

all the more provoking on that very account. She appeared to be making

strenuous efforts to rise, but as every attempt to assume an erect

posture brought her closer to the ghost, she sank back helplessly in

her chair after every effort, and resumed her dreadful staring and

noiseless gasping.

“You had better scream, madame,” said the disgusted ghost. “Pray, do

not restrain yourself on my account. It is really painful for me to

witness your suffering. If my presence here is distasteful to you, pray

have the goodness to intimate the fact in the abrupt and startling

manner so much affected by this family. You had better express your

emotions, if you have any. If you have through any little passing

thrill of excitement, temporarily lost the use of your voice, and find

some difficulty in recovering it, perhaps I can assist you.”

With a horrible leer he withdrew the drapery from his neck, and leaning

back his head disclosed the gaping incision in his respiratory and

swallowing apparatus which had compelled him to go into the ghost

business. As he had shrewdly conjectured, that startling display

developed the full action of the old lady’s dormant vocal powers, and,

for the next five minutes, Bedlam was a quiet, sequestered cloister in

comparison with that house. For an instant the author of all the uproar

paused to smile at the vociferous woman screaming till the chandelier

trembled, and pounding a vigorous tattoo on the floor with her aged

heels, and then he left the house, merely stopping as he went to look

in on the kitchen, and by one genial wink at the servants establish a

first-class English opera chorus in that department of the household.