The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories | Page 4

and said, with a lofty
look of compassion for my insignificance:
"In you, sir?--B."
"B, sir?" said I, growing warm.
"I have nothing to do with you, sir," returned the gentleman; "pray let
me listen--O."
He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.
At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication
with the guard, is a serious position. The thought came to my relief that
the gentleman might be what is popularly called a Rapper: one of a sect
for (some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don't
believe in. I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread
out of my mouth.
"You will excuse me," said the gentleman contemptuously, "if I am too
much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it.
I have passed the night--as indeed I pass the whole of my time now--in
spiritual intercourse."
"O!" said I, somewhat snappishly.
"The conferences of the night began," continued the gentleman, turning
several leaves of his note-book, "with this message: 'Evil
communications corrupt good manners.'"
"Sound," said I; "but, absolutely new?"
"New from spirits," returned the gentleman.
I could only repeat my rather snappish "O!" and ask if I might be

favored with the last communication.
"'A bird in the hand,'" said the gentleman, reading his last entry with
great solemnity, "'is worth two in the Bosh.'"
"Truly I am of the same opinion," said I; "but shouldn't it be Bush?"
"It came to me, Bosh," returned the gentleman.
The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had
delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. "My friend, I
hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway carriage. How
do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and
seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here.
He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling." Galileo
likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. "I am glad to
see you, amico. Come sta? Water will freeze when it is cold enough.
Addio!" In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had
occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, "Bubler," for
which offence against orthography and good manners he had been
dismissed as out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful
mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had
introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen,
respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur,
nephew of King John of England, had described himself as tolerably
comfortable in the seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on
velvet, under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.
If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favored me with these
disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the sight of the
rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent Order of the vast
Universe, made me impatient of them. In a word, I was so impatient of
them, that I was mightily glad to get out at the next station, and to
exchange these clouds and vapors for the free air of Heaven.
By that time it was a beautiful morning. As I walked away among such
leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown, and russet trees;
and as I looked around me on the wonders of Creation, and thought of

the steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they are
sustained; the gentleman's spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a
piece of journey-work as ever this world saw. In which heathen state of
mind, I came within view of the house, and stopped to examine it
attentively.
It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden: a pretty
even square of some two acres. It was a house of about the time of
George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as bad taste, as
could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole
quartet of Georges. It was uninhabited, but had, within a year or two,
been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the
work had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as
to the paint and plaster, though the colors were fresh. A lop-sided board
drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was "to let on very
reasonable terms, well furnished." It was much too closely and heavily
shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before
the front windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of
which had been extremely ill chosen.
It was easy to see that it was an avoided house--a house