Told After Supper | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1891 Leadenhall Press edition.

TOLD AFTER SUPPER
by Jerome K. Jerome

Contents:
Introductory How the Stories came to be told Teddy Biffles'
Story--Johnson and Emily; or, the Faithful Ghost Interlude--The
Doctor's Story Mr. Coombe's Story--The Haunted Mill; or, the Ruined
Home Interlude My Uncle's Story--The Ghost of the Blue Chamber A
Personal Explanation My Own Story

INTRODUCTORY

It was Christmas Eve.
I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable way to
begin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox, respectable
way, and taught to always do the proper, orthodox, respectable thing;
and the habit clings to me.
Of course, as a mere matter of information it is quite unnecessary to
mention the date at all. The experienced reader knows it was Christmas
Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost
story,
Christmas Eve is the ghosts' great gala night. On Christmas Eve they
hold their annual fete. On Christmas Eve everybody in Ghostland who
IS anybody--or rather, speaking of ghosts, one should say, I suppose,
every nobody who IS any nobody--comes out to show himself or
herself, to see and to be seen, to promenade about and display their
winding-sheets and grave-clothes to each other, to criticise one
another's style, and sneer at one another's complexion.
"Christmas Eve parade," as I expect they themselves term it, is a
function, doubtless, eagerly prepared for and looked forward to
throughout Ghostland, especially the swagger set, such as the murdered
Barons, the crime-stained Countesses, and the Earls who came over
with the Conqueror, and assassinated their relatives, and died raving

mad.
Hollow moans and fiendish grins are, one may be sure, energetically
practised up. Blood-curdling shrieks and marrow-freezing gestures are
probably rehearsed for weeks beforehand. Rusty chains and gory
daggers are over-hauled, and put into good working order; and sheets
and shrouds, laid carefully by from the previous year's show, are taken
down and shaken out, and mended, and aired.
Oh, it is a stirring night in Ghostland, the night of December the
twenty-fourth!
Ghosts never come out on Christmas night itself, you may have noticed.
Christmas Eve, we suspect, has been too much for them; they are not
used to excitement. For about a week after Christmas Eve, the
gentlemen ghosts, no doubt, feel as if they were all head, and go about
making solemn resolutions to themselves that they will stop in next
Christmas Eve; while lady spectres are contradictory and snappish, and
liable to burst into tears and leave the room hurriedly on being spoken
to, for no perceptible cause whatever.
Ghosts with no position to maintain--mere middle-class ghosts--
occasionally, I believe, do a little haunting on off-nights: on
All-hallows Eve, and at Midsummer; and some will even run up