Ghosts I Have Met | Page 7

ROOM"]
It happened last Christmas, in my own home. I had provided as a little
surprise for my wife a complete new solid silver service marked with
her initials. The tree had been prepared for the children, and all had
retired save myself. I had lingered later than the others to put the silver
service under the tree, where its happy recipient would find it when she
went to the tree with the little ones the next morning. It made a
magnificent display: the two dozen of each kind of spoon, the forks, the
knives, the coffee-pot, water -urn, and all; the salvers, the
vegetable-dishes, olive-forks, cheese-scoops, and other dazzling
attributes of a complete service, not to go into details, presented a fairly
scintillating picture which would have made me gasp if I had not, at the
moment when my own breath began to catch, heard another gasp in the
corner immediately behind me. Turning about quickly to see whence it
came, I observed a dark figure in the pale light of the moon which
streamed in through the window.
"Who are you?" I cried, starting back, the physical symptoms of a
ghostly presence manifesting themselves as usual.
"I am the ghost of one long gone before," was the reply, in sepulchral
tones.
I breathed a sigh of relief, for I had for a moment feared it was a
burglar.

"Oh!" I said. "You gave me a start at first. I was afraid you were a
material thing come to rob me." Then turning towards the tree, I
observed, with a wave of the hand, "Fine lay out, eh?"
"Beautiful," he said, hollowly. "Yet not so beautiful as things I've seen
in realms beyond your ken."
And then he set about telling me of the beautiful gold and silver ware
they used in the Elysian Fields, and I must confess Monte Cristo would
have had a hard time, with Sindbad the Sailor to help, to surpass the
picture of royal magnificence the spectre drew. I stood inthralled until,
even as he was talking, the clock struck three, when he rose up, and
moving slowly across the floor, barely visible, murmured regretfully
that he must be off, with which he faded away down the back stairs. I
pulled my nerves, which were getting rather strained, together again,
and went to bed.
[Illustration: "THEN HE SAT ABOUT TELLING ME OF THE
BEAUTIFUL GOLD AND SILVER WARE THEY USE IN THE
ELYSIAN FIELDS."]
_Next morning every bit of that silver-ware was gone_; and, what is
more, three weeks later I found the ghost's picture in the Rogues'
Gallery in New York as that of the cleverest sneak-thief in the country.
All of which, let me say to you, dear reader, in conclusion, proves that
when you are dealing with ghosts you mustn't give up all your physical
resources until you have definitely ascertained that the thing by which
you are confronted, horrid or otherwise, is a ghost, and not an all too
material rogue with a light step, and a commodious jute bag for plunder
concealed beneath his coat.
"How to tell a ghost?" you ask.
Well, as an eminent master of fiction frequently observes in his
writings, "that is another story," which I shall hope some day to tell for
your instruction and my own aggrandizement.

THE MYSTERY OF MY GRANDMOTHER'S HAIR SOFA
It happened last Christmas Eve, and precisely as I am about to set it
forth. It has been said by critics that I am a romancer of the wildest sort,
but that is where my critics are wrong. I grant that the experiences
through which I have passed, some of which have contributed to the
gray matter in my hair, however little they may have augmented that
within my cranium--experiences which I have from time to time set
forth to the best of my poor abilities in the columns of such periodicals
as I have at my mercy--have been of an order so excessively
supernatural as to give my critics a basis for their aspersions; but they
do not know, as I do, that that basis is as uncertain as the shifting sands
of the sea, inasmuch as in the setting forth of these episodes I have
narrated them as faithfully as the most conscientious realist could wish,
and am therefore myself a true and faithful follower of the realistic
school. I cannot be blamed because these things happen to me. If I sat
down in my study to imagine the strange incidents to which I have in
the past called attention, with no other object in view than to make my
readers unwilling to retire for the night, to destroy the peace of mind of
those who are good enough to purchase my literary wares, or to titillate
till tense