Ghosts I Have Met | Page 6

the log fire
he loomed grimly up before me.
"None of your business," he replied, insolently, showing his teeth as he
spoke. "On the other hand, who are you? This is my room, and not
yours, and it is I who have the right to question. If you have any
business here, well and good. If not, you will oblige me by removing
yourself, for your presence is offensive to me."
"I am a guest in the house," I answered, restraining my impulse to
throw the inkstand at him for his impudence. "And this room has been
set apart for my use by my host."
"One of the servant's guests, I presume?" he said, insultingly, his lividly
lavender-like lip upcurling into a haughty sneer, which was maddening
to a self-respecting worm like myself.
I rose up from my bed, and picked up the poker to bat him over the
head, but again I restrained myself. It will not do to quarrel, I thought. I
will be courteous if he is not, thus giving a dead Englishman a lesson
which wouldn't hurt some of the living.
"No," I said, my voice tremulous with wrath--"no; I am the guest of my
friend Mr. Jarley, an American, who--"
"Same thing," observed the intruder, with a yellow sneer. "Race of
low-class animals, those Americans--only fit for gentlemen's stables,
you know."
This was too much. A ghost may insult me with impunity, but when he
tackles my people he must look out for himself. I sprang forward with

an ejaculation of wrath, and with all my strength struck at him with the
poker, which I still held in my hand. If he had been anything but a
ghost, he would have been split vertically from top to toe; but as it was,
the poker passed harmlessly through his misty make-up, and rent a
great gash two feet long in Jarley's divan. The yellow sneer faded from
his lips, and a maddening blue smile took its place.
"Humph!" he observed, nonchalantly. "What a useless ebullition, and
what a vulgar display of temper! Really you are the most humorous
insect I have yet encountered. From what part of the States do you
come? I am truly interested to know in what kind of soil exotics of your
peculiar kind are cultivated. Are you part of the fauna or the flora of
your tropical States--or what?"
And then I realized the truth. There is no physical method of combating
a ghost which can result in his discomfiture, so I resolved to try the
intellectual. It was a mind-to-mind contest, and he was easy prey after I
got going. I joined him in his blue smile, and began to talk about the
English aristocracy; for I doubted not, from the spectre's manner, that
he was or had been one of that class. He had about him that haughty
lack of manners which bespoke the aristocrat. I waxed very eloquent
when, as I say, I got my mind really going. I spoke of kings and queens
and their uses in no uncertain phrases, of divine right, of dukes, earls,
marquises--of all the pompous establishments of British royalty and
nobility--with that contemptuously humorous tolerance of a necessary
and somewhat amusing evil which we find in American comic papers.
We had a battle royal for about one hour, and I must confess he was a
foeman worthy of any man's steel, so long as I was reasonable in my
arguments; but when I finally observed that it wouldn't be ten years
before Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth had the whole lot
engaged for the New York circus season, stalking about the Madison
Square Garden arena, with the Prince of Wales at the head beating a
tomtom, he grew iridescent with wrath, and fled madly through the
wainscoting of the room. It was purely a mental victory. All the
physical possibilities of my being would have exhausted themselves
futilely before him; but when I turned upon him the resources of my
fancy, my imagination unrestrained, and held back by no sense of

responsibility, he was as a child in my hands, obstreperous but certain
to be subdued. If it were not for Mrs. Jarley's wrath--which, I admit,
she tried to conceal--over the damage to her divan, I should now look
back upon that visitation as the most agreeable haunting experience of
my life; at any rate, it was at that time that I first learned how to handle
ghosts, and since that time I have been able to overcome them without
trouble-- save in one instance, with which I shall close this chapter of
my reminiscences, and which I give only to prove the necessity of
observing strictly one point in dealing with spectres.
[Illustration: "HE FLED MADLY THROUGH THE WAINSCOTING
OF THE