Chapter IX: Conclusion: It appears from the foregoing, (6)

Dr. William P. Dewees, formerly Professor of Obstetrics in the University of Pennsylvania, the celebrated author, physician, and surgeon, practised seventeen years before he obtained a diploma. He was of Swedish descent on his father's side, and Irish on his mother's. His father died in very limited circumstances, when William was a boy; hence he received no collegiate education until such time as he could earn means, by his own efforts, to pay for that coveted desideratum. We find him, with an ordinary school education, serving as an apothecary's clerk, a student of medicine, and at the early age of twenty-one years trying to practise medicine in a country town fourteen miles from Philadelphia. Young Dewees possessed great talent and energy, but his personal appearance was scarcely such, at that early age, as to inspire the stoical country folks with the requisite confidence to speedily intrust him with their precious lives and more cherished coppers!

"He was scarcely of medium stature, florid complexion, brown hair, and was remarkably youthful in his appearance," says Professor Hodge, M. D.

I have before me an excellent likeness "of the embryo professor," which admirably corresponds with the description given above; but though "youthful," yea, bordering on "greenness," I can read in that frank, intelligent countenance the lines of deep thought, and a soul burning with desire for greater knowledge. The too florid countenance and narrow nostrils are sure indications of a consumptive predisposition. Dr. Dewees died May 30, 1841. He was well read in French and Latin, and also various sciences.

A HARD STARTING.

_Sketch of Western Practice._--The following interesting sketch is from the able pen of Dr. Richmond, of Ohio, now a wealthy and eminent M. D. It was originally contributed, if I mistake not, to the "Scalpel."

"I set myself down with my household goods in a land of strangers. How I was to procure bread, or what I was to do, were shrouded in the mysterious future. Memory came to my consolation; for, in spite of myself, the 'Diary of a London Physician,' read in other days, came, with its racy pictures, flitting before my mind's eye; and I knew not but I, too, might yet wish myself, my Mary, and my child sleeping in the cold grave, to hide me from the persecution that seemed to follow me with such sleepless vigilance....

"My store of old watches now came into play. A gentleman wishing to sell out his land, I invested all the wealth I possessed in the purchase of a ten-acre lot, shouldered my axe, and by the aid of a brother I soon prepared logs for the mill sufficient to erect me a small dwelling. I never was happier than when preparing the ground and splitting the blocks of sandstone for the foundation of my house. One customer, whose wife I had carried through a lingering fever, furnished me a frame for a dwelling, and I fell in his debt for a pair of boots. Another furnished nails and glass, and in the course of eight months I moved into my new house.

"For two years I fed my cow, and raised my own provender to feed my gallant nag, which shared my toil and its profits. My first two years' labor barely returned sufficient profit to pay for my home and feed my little family.

"My nag had died, and the terrible drought of 1846 forced me to relinquish the horse I had hired, and for five months I performed all my visits on foot, often travelling from six to ten miles to see one patient....

"These were trying times; but what if the elements were unpropitious? I had food and shelter for myself and family,--blessings about which I had often been in doubt,--and I was fully prepared to let 'the heathen rage, and the people imagine' what they chose!... The first winter was one of great severity; the weather was very changeable, and the most awful snow-storms were often succeeded by heavy rains, and the roads so horrid as to be impassable on horseback or in carriages. I had a patient five miles distant, sick with lung fever, and, in an attendance of forty days I made thirty journeys on foot (three hundred miles to attend one patient!) His recovery added much to my reputation, and I received for my services a new cloak and coat, which I much needed, and a hive of honey bees!...

"An old horse which I again hired of a friend had a polite way of limping, and was a source of much merriment among my patrons. I persistently attributed what they deemed a fault entirely to the politeness of the quadruped; and this nag, with my plain and rustic appearance, endeared me to the laboring population, and thus my calamities became my greatest friends. My fortune changed, and the experience and name I had acquired now came in as capital in trade, and a flood of 'luck' soon followed."

ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.

Seated upon the outside of an ancient London stage-coach, to which were attached four raw-boned, old horses, just ready to start for Wolverhaven one pleasant afternoon, you may easily imagine, kind reader,--for it is a fact,--a chubby-faced, commonplace little boy, some ten years old, with another like youthful companion,--"two Londoners,"--while comfortably ensconced within, in one corner of the vehicle, is a large, stern-looking old gentleman, in "immense wig and ruffled shirt."

The stage-horn is sounded, the driver cracks his whip, the sleepy old nags wake up, the coach rocks from side to side, and in a moment more the team is off for its destination.

Why! the reader is readily reminded of the scene of "_Old Squeers_," taking the wretched little boys down to his "Academy," in Yorkshire, "where youth were boarded, clothed, furnished with pocket-money," and taught everything, from "writing to trigonometry," "arithmetic to astronomy," languages of the "_living_ and _dead_" and "diet unparalleled!" Nevertheless it is another case, far before "Old Squeers" time.

The elderly gentleman, in top-wig and immense ruffles, was Dr. Robertson, teacher of Wolverhampton Grammar School, and the chubby little boy was Master John Abernethy. Who the "other boy" was is not known, as he never made his mark in after life. Says Dr. Macilwain,--

"We can quite imagine a little boy, careless in his dress, not slovenly, however, with both hands in his trousers pockets, some morning about the year 1774, standing under the sunny side of the wall at Wolverhampton School; his pockets containing, perhaps, a few shillings, some ha'pence, a knife with the point broken, a pencil, together with a tolerably accurate sketch of 'Old Robertson's wig,'--which article, shown in an accredited portrait now before us, was one of those enormous by-gone bushes, which represented a sort of impenetrable fence around the cranium, as if to guard the precious material within; the said boy just finishing a story to his laughing companions, though no sign of mirth appeared in him, save the least curl of the lip, and a smile that would creep out of the corner of his eye in spite of himself."

"The doctor" was represented as being a passionate man. Squeers again! One day young Abernethy had to do some Greek Testament, when his glib translation aroused the suspicion of the watchful old doctor, who discovered the 'crib' in a Greek-Latin version, partially secreted under the boy's desk. No sooner did the doctor make this discovery than with his doubled fist he felled the culprit with one blow to the earth. Squeers again!

"'Why, what an old plagiarist Mr. Dickens must have been!' you exclaim.

"But the case in 'Nicholas Nickleby' is worse, far worse, for 'the little boy sitting on the trunk only sneezed.'

"'Hallo, sir,' growled the schoolmaster (Squeers), 'what's that?'

"'Nothing, sir,' replied the little boy.

"'Nothing, sir!' exclaimed Squeers.

"'Please, sir, I sneezed!' rejoined the boy, trembling till the little trunk shook under him.

"'O, sneezed, did you?' retorted Mr. Squeers. 'Then what did you say "Nothing" for, sir?'

"In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a couple of knuckles into his eyes, and began to cry; wherefore Mr. Squeers knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of the head, and knocked him on again with a blow on the other."

Robertson was a fact; Squeers was a fable. That's the difference.

As Dr. Robertson taught neither arithmetic nor writing in his school, the pupils went to King Street, to a Miss Ready, to receive instruction in those branches. This lady, if report is true, wielded the quill and cowhide with equal grace and mercy, and when the case came to hand, did not accept the modern advice, to "spare the boy and spoil the rod."

When the great surgeon was at the height of his fame, in London, many years afterwards, Miss Ready, still rejoicing in "single blessedness," called on her former pupil. In introducing his respected and venerable teacher to his wife, Abernethy laconically remarked, "I beg to introduce you to a lady who has boxed my ears many a time."

An old schoolmate, when eighty-five years old, wrote to the author of "Memoirs of Abernethy," saying, among other things, "In sports he took the first place, and usually made a strong side; was quick and active, and soon learned a new game."

It was contrary to his own desire that John Abernethy became a physician. "Had my father let me be a lawyer, I should have known by heart every act of Parliament," he repeatedly affirmed.

This was not bragging, as the following anecdote will illustrate:--

On a birthday anniversary of Mrs. Abernethy, mother of John, a gentleman recited a long copy of verses, which he had composed for the occasion.

"Ah," said young Abernethy, "that is a good joke, pretending you have written these verses in honor of my mother. Why, sir, I know those lines well, and can say them by heart."

"It is quite impossible, as no one has seen the copy but myself," rejoined the gentleman, the least annoyed by the accusation of plagiarism.

Upon this Abernethy arose, and repeated them throughout, correctly, to the no small discomfiture of the author. Abernethy had remembered them by hearing the gentleman recite them but once!

"A boy thwarted in his choice of a profession is generally somewhat indifferent as to the course next presented to him." Residing next door neighbor to Abernethy's father was Dr. Charles Blicke, a surgeon in extensive practice. This was very convenient. Sir Charles is represented as having been quick-sighted enough to discover that "the Abernethy boy" was clever, a good scholar, and withal a "sharp fellow." Thus, between the indifference of the parent, and the selfishness of the surgeon, the would-be lawyer, John Abernethy, was apprenticed to the "barber-surgeon" for five years. He was then but fifteen years of age.

"All that young Abernethy probably knew of Sir Charles was, that he rode about in a fine carriage, saw a great many people, and took a great many fees; all of which, though presenting no further attractions for Abernethy, made a _prima facie_ case not altogether repulsive."

We must not forget to mention that young Abernethy was of a very inquiring mind. "When I was a boy," he said in after years, "I half ruined myself in buying oranges and sweetmeats, in order to ascertain the effects of different kinds of diet on diseases."

Whether he tried said "oranges and other things" on himself or some unfortunate victim, my informant saith not; but I leave the reader to decide by his own earlier appetites and experiences. "When I was a boy," I think is significant of the probabilities that it was his own digestive organs that were "half ruined."

Be it as it may, it reminds me of the case of a little country boy, who, on his first advent to the city on a holiday, was chaperoned by his somewhat older and sharper city cousin,--"one of the b'hoy's,"--who exercised a sort of vigilance over the uninitiated rustic, that the little fellow might not surfeit himself by too great a rapacity for peanuts, gingerbread, candies, and oranges, often generously sharing the danger by partaking largely of the small boy's purchases in order to spare his more delicate stomach.

Finding the ignorant little rustic about to devour a nice-looking orange, his cousin pounced upon him just in time to prevent the rash act.

"Here, Sammy; don't you know that is one of the nastiest and most indigestiblest things you could put into your stomach? Give it here!"

Rustic, whose faith in the wisdom of his maturer cousin, though very great, was yet quite counterbalanced by the sweets in the orange, slightly held back, when the other continued,--

"Leastwise, Sammy, let's have a hold of it, and suck the abominable juice out for you."

(For this digression I beg the pardon of the reader; for the idea I thank Frank Leslie.)

George Macilwain, M. D., F. R. C. S., etc., in prefacing the life of the great London surgeon, gives a brief and interesting sketch of his own boyhood, also his early impressions of Abernethy, and his first attendance on his lectures.

"My father practised on the border of a forest, and when he was called at night to visit a distant patient, it was the greatest treat to me, when a little boy, to be allowed to saddle my pony and accompany him. I used to wonder what he could find so 'disagreeable' in that which was to me the greatest possible pleasure; for whether we were skirting a bog on the darkest night, or cantering over the heather by moonlight, I certainly thought there could be nobody happier than I and my pony. It was on one of these occasions that I first heard the name of 'Abernethy.' The next distinct impression I have of him was derived from hearing father say that a lady patient of his had gone up to London to have an operation performed by Dr. Abernethy, though my father did not think the operation necessary to a cure, and that Abernethy entirely agreed with him; that the operation was not performed; that he sent the lady back, and she was recovering. This gave me a notion that Dr. Abernethy must be a good man, as well as a great physician.

"As long as surgery meant riding across the forest with my father, holding his horse, or, if he stopped in too long, seeing if his horse rode as well as my pony, I thought it a very agreeable occupation; but when I found that it included many other things not so agreeable, I soon discovered that there was a profession I liked much better....

"Disappointed in being allowed to follow the pursuit I had chosen, I looked on the one I was about to adopt with something approximating to repulsion; and thus one afternoon, about the year 1816, and somewhat to my own surprise, I found myself walking down Holborn Hill on my way to Dr. Abernethy's lecture at St. Bartholomew's.

"When Dr. Abernethy entered, I was pleased with the expression of his countenance. I almost fancied he sympathized with the melancholy with which I felt oppressed. At first I listened with some attention; as he proceeded, I began even to feel pleasure; as he progressed, I found myself entertained; and before he concluded, I was delighted. What an agreeable, happy man he seems! What a fine profession! What wouldn't I give to know as much as he does! Well, I will see what I can do. In short, I was converted."

All who ever heard him lecture agree that Dr. Abernethy had a most happy way of addressing students. Notwithstanding he has often been represented as rough in his every-day intercourse with men, he was easy, mild, and agreeable in the lecture-hall, and kind and compassionate in the operating-room.

After having carefully studied all that has been written respecting his style and manner as a lecturer and delineator, and also studiously listened to and watched the ways and peculiarities of our most excellent lecturer on anatomy at Harvard, I find many striking resemblances between Dr. Abernethy and Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes.

"The position of Abernethy was always easy and natural, sometimes almost homely. In the anatomical lecture he always stood, and either leaned against the wall, with his arms folded before him, or rested one hand on the table; sometimes one hand in his pocket. In his surgical lecture he usually sat. He was particularly happy in a kind of cosiness, or friendliness of manner, which seemed to identify him with his audience, as if we were about to investigate something interesting together, and not as though we were going to be 'lectured at,' at all. His voice seldom rose above what we term the conversational, and was always pleasing in quality, and enlivened by a sort of archness of expression."

He always kept his eye on the audience, except slightly turning to one side to explain a diagram or subject, "turning his back on no man."

"He had no offensive habits. We have known lecturers who never began without making faces;" we might add, "and with many a hem and haw, or nose-blowing."

"Not long ago we heard a very sensible lecturer, and a very estimable man, produce a most ludicrous effect by the above. He had been stating very clearly some important facts, and he then observed,--

"'The great importance of these I will now proceed to show--' when he immediately began to apply his pocket-handkerchief most vigorously to his nose, still facing his audience."

The ludicrousness of this "illustration" may well be imagined. Of course the students lost their gravity, and laughed and cheered vigorously.

Going in to hear Dr. Holmes lecture, at one o'clock one afternoon, recently, the writer was both shocked and astonished, on the occasion of the professor slipping in a pleasing innuendo, by hearing the students cheer with their hands, and stamp with their thick boots on the seats.

I shall have occasion to refer to this splendid man, the pleasing lecturer, the skilful operator, the able author, the ripe scholar, the pride of Harvard and the state,--Dr. O. W. Holmes,--in another chapter.

THE HOMELESS STUDENT.

(Scene from the EARLY LIFE OF A BOSTON PHYSICIAN. By permission.)

Standing on the steps of the Astor House, New York, one cheerless forenoon in early June, with my carpet-bag in one hand and my fresh medical diploma in the other, with a heavy weight of sorrow at my heart, and only sixteen cents in my pocket, I presented, to myself at least, a picture of such utter despair as words are inadequate to express.[4]

My home--no; I had none--the home, rather, of my kind old father-in-law, where dwelt, for the time being, my wife and child, was many hundred miles away. And how was I to reach it? I could not walk that distance, and sixteen cents would not carry me there. I looked up Broadway, and I looked down towards the Battery. I was alone amid an immense sea of humans, which ebbed and flowed continually past me. O, how wistfully I looked to see if there might be one face amongst the throng which I might recognize! but there was none. Strange, passing strange, not one of that host did I ever gaze upon before! Where--how--should I raise the money necessary to take me from this land of strangers?

"Pinny, sir? Just one pinny. Me father is broken up, and me mither is sick at home. For God's sake give me jist one pinny to buy me some bread."

I turned my gaze upon the picture of squalor and wretchedness just by my side. I need not describe her; she was just like a thousand others in that great Babel.

"Here is doubtless a case of distress, but it is not of the heart, like mine. Such poor have no heart. Skin, muscle, head, stomach! heart, none!"

"Where is your father, did you say?" I asked, mechanically.

"In the Slarter-house; broken up from a fall from a stagin' in Twenty-sixth Street, sir," replied the beggar-girl, still extending her hand for a penny.

"What is he doing in a slaughter-house, sis?" I inquired.

"The Slarter-house is Bellyvew horse-pittle, sir; that's what we Irish call it, sir. Will ye give me the pinny, sir?"

"O, yes, to be sure. Here are pennies for you. Go!"

I knew of a poor Irishman who was brought in there at the hospital a few days before badly "broken up" from a fall on Twenty-sixth Street. His name was John Murphy; they are all named Murphy, or something similar; so it was useless to ask the child her father's name--probably it would have been Murphy.

The conversation had the good effect of arousing me from my lethargy to action. I must not stay in this metropolis and starve. I could not remain and beg, like the Irish girl.

I went to Professor ----, the dean, and requested him to take back my diploma, and let me have sufficient money to carry me home. He complied--God bless him!--and I took the Sound steamer that afternoon for the land of my nativity. What cared I if I was a second-class passenger; I would in two days see my wife and my child!

* * * * *

I had reached home, and was in the bosom of my family once more, and amongst my friends, in a Christian land; for which I "thanked God, and took courage."

"Then pledged me the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
Ne'er from my home and my weeping friends to part;
My children kissed me a thousand times o'er;
My wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart."

I had a "call" to practise in a country town twenty-five miles from E----, where my family was to remain a few days till I had secured a house to cover their heads amongst the good friends who were to become my future patrons, as a few of them had been previous to my going to college. The stage, a one-horse affair, called for my trunk, medicine-case, etc., and, having no money with which to pay my fare, I told the driver that "I would walk along," while he picked up another passenger in an opposite direction, "and if he overtook me on the road before I got a ride with some one going to S----, he could take me in."

I walked bravely along a mile or more, and, hearing the stage coming, I stepped from the road-side, secreting myself beneath a friendly tree till he drove past. Issuing from my hiding-place, I trudged along till noon. My darling little wife had taken the precaution to place in my oversack pocket some doughnuts and cheese, and, when I had reached a clear, running brook, I sat myself down upon a log, under the shade of the woods, and partook of my very frugal meal, quenching my thirst from the waters of the brook, which, like Diogenes, I raised in the hollow of my hand.

Thus refreshed, I picked up my overcoat, and again walked along. Before dark I reached S----, pretty tired and foot-sore from such a long walk.

The people, who were expecting me, were much surprised at my non-arrival in the mail; but the unsophisticated driver assured them I had probably secured a ride ahead of him, and I would put in an appearance before nightfall.

About midnight the door-bell rang,--I stopped at the hotel that night,--and a young gentleman asked for Dr. C. I answered the call at once, which was to the daughter of one of the most influential citizens of the place. The young man who called me was her intended. They had been to a party, and she had partaken freely of oysters, milk, and pickles.

Never did fifteen grains of ipecac prove a greater friend to me than it did on that occasion; and in an hour I was back to bed again.

The news of the new doctor's arrival, fresh from a New York college, and his first "remarkable cure of the post-master's daughter" that same night, spread like wildfire, and my reputation was nearly established.

XI.

GHOSTS AND WITCHES.

"Save and defend us from our _ghostly_ enemies."--COMMON PRAYER.

FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.--WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.--A TRUE
STORY.--THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.--A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.--A MYSTERY.--THE
NAGLES FAMILY.--RAISING THE DEAD.--A LIVELY STAMPEDE.--HOLY
WATER.--CÆSAR'S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.--LORD BYRON AND DR. JOHNSON.--GHOST
OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.--"JOCKEYING A GHOST."--THE WOUNDED BIRD.--A
BISHOP SEES A GHOST.--MUSICAL GHOSTS.--A HAUNTED HOUSE.--ABOUT
WITCHES.--"WITCHES IN THE CREAM."--HORSE-SHOES.--WOMAN OF ENDOR NOT A
WITCH.--WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.--THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, OR
WITCHES.

Is it not quite time--I appeal to the sensible reader--that such folly was expunged from our literature? What is a ghost? Who ever saw, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled one? Must a person possess some miraculous quality of perception beyond the five senses commonly allotted to man in order to become cognizant of a ghostly presence?

What stupid folly is ghost belief! Yet there are very many individuals in this enlightened day and generation, who, from perverted spirituality, or great credulousness, will accept a ghost story, or a "spiritual revelation," without wincing.

It would seem that many great men of the past, as Calvin, Bacon, Milton, Dante, Lords Byron and Nelson, Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and others, believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits on this mundane sphere.

There are but two classes who believe in ghosts, viz., the ignorant as one class, and persons with large or perverted spirituality--phrenologically speaking--as the other. These are the believers in dreams, in ghosts, in spirits, and fortune-telling. These, too, are the religious (?) fanatics, etc.

THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD GHOST

is curious.

"The first significance of the word, as well as 'spirit,' is breath, or wind." It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is from _gust_, the wind. Hence, a _gust_ of _wind_. The Irish word _goath_, wind, comes nearer to the modern English pronunciation, and shows how easily it could have been corrupted to _ghost_.

It is easy to imagine the good old Saxon ladies, sitting around the evening fireside, and just as one of them has finished some marvellous story of that superstitious age, they are startled by a sudden blast of wind, sweeping around the gabled cottage, and her listeners exclaim, in suppressed breath,--

"Hark! There's a fearful gust!"

The transit from _gust_ to _ghost_ is easily done. The clothes spread upon the bushes without, or pinned to the lines, flapping in the night air, are seen through the shutterless windows, and they become the object of attraction. The _effect_ supersedes the _cause_, and the clothes become the gust, goath, or ghost! The clothes, necessarily, must be white, or they _could not be seen in the night time_! Hence a ghost is always clothed in white. Therefore the wind (gust) is no longer the ghost, but any white object seen moving in the night air.

"But I am a wandering ghost--
I am an idle breath,
That the sweets of the things now lost
Are haunting unto death.
Pity me out in the cold,
Never to rest any more,
Because of my share in the purple and gold,
Lost from the world's great store.

"I whirl through empty space,
A hapless, hurried ghost;
For me there is no place--
I'm weary, wandering, lost.
Safe from the night and cold,
All else is sheltered--all,
From the sheep at rest in the fold,
To the black wasp on the wall."

Moffat says that a tribe of Caffres formerly employed the word _Morino_ to designate the Supreme Being; but as they sank into savagery, losing the idea of God, it came to mean only a fabulous ghost, of which they had great terror.

Having briefly shown the folly of the existence of the word in our vocabulary, I will proceed to explode a few of the best authenticated--so called--"ghost stories;" and if I leave anything unexplained in ghostology, let the reader attribute it to either my want of space in which to write so much, or the neglect of my early education in the _dead languages_.

THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.

I obtained the following story from one of the sentries:--

At Portsmouth, R. I., there was a camp established during the late war, 186-. There was a graveyard in one corner of the enclosed grounds, where several soldier-boys had been buried from the hospital, and here a guard was nightly stationed.

Of course there were many stories told around the campfires, of ghosts and spirits that flitted about the mounds at the dead hours of the night, circulated particularly to frighten those stationed at that point on picket duty.

The body of a soldier had recently been exhumed and placed in a new and more respectable coffin than the pine box coffin furnished by Uncle Sam, in which he had been buried, and the old one was left on the ground.

Partly to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather, and quite as much to show his utter disregard of all ghostly visitors, my informant secured the old pine coffin, "washed it out, though it was impossible to remove all the stains," and, driving a stake firmly into the ground, he stood the coffin on one end, and, removing the lid, used to stand therein on rainy nights.

"When it did not rain, I turned it down, and my companion and myself used to sit on the bottom.

"One day a soldier-boy had died in the hospital, and his friends came to take the body home for Christian burial. It was necessary to remove him in a sheet to the place where they had an elegant casket, bought by his wealthy friends, to receive the remains.

"That very night I was on duty with my friend Charley S., when, near midnight, seated upon the empty coffin, with my gun resting against the side, and my head resting in the palms of my hands, I fell into a drowse.

"Waking up suddenly, I saw something white through the darkness before me; for it was a fearfully dark night, I assure you. I rubbed my sleepy eyes to make sure of my sight, and took another look. I discerned a form, higher than a man, moving about over the mounds but a few yards distant. It had wide side-wings, but they did not seem to assist in the motion of the body part, which did not reach to the ground. I thought I must be asleep, and actually pinched my legs to awake myself before I took a final look at his ghostship. There he stood, stock still. I listened for my companion, without removing my eyes from the white object before me. Still I was not scared, but meant to see it out. I knew I could not see a man far through that impenetrable darkness, for there were no stars nor moon to reveal him. I would not call for help, for if it was a farce to scare me, I should become the laughing-stock of the whole camp.

"Just then I heard the grass crackle, and I knew Charley was approaching in the rear. Still there hung the apparition. I arose from the coffin, my eyes fixed on the object before me, picked up my musket, took deliberate aim at the centre of the thing, and just as I cocked my rifle, I heard Charley set back the hammer of his 'death-dealer.' He, too, had discovered the very remarkable appearance, whatever it was; and now the guns of two 'unfailing shots' covered the object. In another second it had suddenly disappeared! I then spoke, and we ran forward, but found nothing! Where had it gone so very suddenly? It had vanished without sight or sound. We gave up the search; but still I did not believe we had seen anything supernatural.

"There was no little discussion in camp on the following day on the subject. Charley said but little. I could not explain the remarkable phenomenon, and a splendid ghost story was about established, in spite of me, before the mystery became unravelled.

"A tall fellow, who worked about the hospital, and who assisted in taking away the corpse, was returning with the sheet, when he thought he would give the sentry a scare from his coffin by throwing the sheet over his head and stretching out his arms like wings. His clothes being black, his legs did not show; hence the appearance of a white object floating in the air. Hearing the guns cocked, he instantly jerked the sheet from his head; winding it up, he turned and ran away. This accounted for it becoming so instantaneously invisible.

"'Yes,' said the sentry, 'and in a second more you would have been made a ghost!'"

RAISING THE DEAD.

_The Nagles Family._--The following remarkable and ridiculous affair transpired in a village where the writer once resided. The Nagleses were Irish. The family consisted of old Nagles, his wife,--who did washing for my mother,--John Tom and Tom John, besides Mary. The reason of having the boys named as above was, that in case either died, the sainted names would still be in the family. This was old Mrs. Nagles' explanation of the matter.

The old man worked about the wharves, wheeled wood and carried coal, and did such like jobs during summer, and chopped wood in the winter. I well remember of hearing stories of his greenness when he first came to town. He was early employed to wheel wood on board a coaster lying at the dock. The captain told him to wheel a load down the plank, cry "Under!" to the men in the hold, and tip down the barrow of wood. All went well till old Nagles got to the stopping-place, over the hold, when he dumped down the load, and cried out, "Stand ferninst, there, down cellar!" to the imminent peril of breaking the heads of the wood-stevedores below.

I well remember also the first appearance of the two boys at the village school one winter.

"What is your name?" inquired the master of the eldest.

"Me name, is it? John Tom Nagles, sir, is me name, and who comes after is the same."

He always was called by us boys "John Tom Nagles, sir," thenceforward. He certainly was the rawest specimen I ever met.

One day the old man was wheeling wood on board a vessel. It was at low water, and there was a distance of sixteen feet from the plank to the bottom of the vessel's hold. The poor old fellow, by some mishap or neglect, let go the barrow, when he called, "Stand ferninst, there, below!" when wood, barrow, and old Mr. Nagles, all went down together. By the fall he broke his neck. I never shall forget the awful lamentation set up by the combined voices of the poor old woman, John Tom, Tom John, and Mary, as they followed the corpse, borne on a wagon, past our house, on the way from the vessel to the Nagles' residence.

On the following day great preparations were made to "wake" the old gentleman according to the most approved fashion in the old country. There were many Irish living--_staying_, at least--in that town, and large quantities of pipes, tobacco, and whiskey were bought up, and the whole town knew that a "powerful time" was anticipated by the Irish who were invited to old Nagles' wake. It was an unusual occurrence, and several boys and young men of the village went to the locality of the Nagles' house to get a look upon the scene when it got under full pressure. I certainly should have been there had not my parents forbidden me to go, and I regret the inability to give my personal testimony to the truth of the statement of what followed, as I do to what preceded, as related above.

"When the wake was at its height, the room full of tobacco smoke, and the jovial mourners full of Irish whiskey,--strychnine and fusel oil,--there was an alarm of fire in the neighborhood. There was a grand rush from the room, as well as from the windows where stood the listeners, and only one old and drunken woman remained to watch the corpse. The door was left open, and some of the young men outside, thinking it a good opportunity to play a joke on the drunken party, ran into the room, and, seeing only the old woman, who was too drunk to offer any objections, they removed the body from the board, depositing it behind the boxes on which the board was laid, and one of their number took the place of the corpse, barely having time to draw the sheet over his face, when the 'wakers' returned.

"The candles burned dimly through the hazy atmosphere of the old room, and no one noticed the change. The pipes were relighted, the whiskey freely passed, and finally one fellow proposed to offer the corpse a lighted pipe and a glass of whiskey, 'for company's sake, through purgatory.'

"Suiting the action to the word, he approached, attempted to raise the head of the 'lively corpse,' and thrust the nasty pipe between his teeth.

"The young man 'playing corpse' was no smoker, and in infinite disgust he motioned the fellow away, who, too drunk to notice it, stuck the pipe in his face, saying, 'Here, ould man, take a shmoke for your ghost's sake.'

"'Bah! Git away wid the div'lish nasty thing,' exclaimed the young man, rising and sitting up in the coffin.

"There was an instantaneous stampede from the room of every waker who was capable of rising to his legs, followed by the fellow in the sheet, who, dropping the ghostly covering at the door, mingled with the rabble, and was not recognized. The priest and the doctor were speedily summoned. The former arrived, heard, outside the house, the wonderful story, and then proceeded to lay the spirit by sprinkling holy water on the door-stone, thence into the room. By this time the smoke had sufficiently subsided to allow a view of the room, when the stiff, frigid body of old Nagles was discovered on the floor, where 'it had fallen,' as they supposed, 'in attempting to walk.' Of course the doctor ridiculed the idea of a stark, cold body rising and speaking; but the Irish, to this day, believe old Nagles, for that once, refused a pipe and a glass of whiskey. The few young men dared not divulge the secret, and it never leaked out till the entire family of Nagles had gone to parts unknown."

* * * * *

I find a great many ghost stories in books, which are not explained; but since the writer knows nothing of their authenticity, nor the persons with whom they were connected, they are unworthy of notice here.

THE GHOST OF CÆSAR AT PHILIPPI.

Dr. Robert Macnish, of Glasgow, in his "Philosophy of Sleep," says, "No doubt the apparition of Cæsar which appeared to Brutus, and declared it would meet him at Philippi, was either a dream or a spectral illusion--probably the latter. Brutus, in all likelihood, had some idea that the great battle which was to decide his fate would be fought at Philippi. Probably it was a good military position, which he had in his mind fixed upon as a fit place to make a final stand; and he had done enough to Cæsar to account for his mind being painfully and constantly engrossed with the image of the assassinated dictator. Hence the verification of this supposed warning; hence the easy explanation of a supposed supernatural event."

* * * * *

"The ghost of Byron" may help to verify the above. Sir Walter Scott was engaged in his study at Abbotsford, not long after the death of Lord Byron, at about the twilight hour, in reading a sketch of the deceased poet. The room was quiet, his thoughts were intensely centred upon the person of his departed friend, when, as he laid down the volume, as he could see to read no longer, and passed into the hall, he saw before him the _eidolon_ of the deceased poet. He remained for some time impressed by the intensity of the illusion, which had thus created a phantom out of some clothes hanging on a screen at the farther end of the hall.

This is not the first time that Byron had appeared to his friends, as the following, from his own pen, will show:--

Byron wrote to his friend, Alexander Murray, less than two years before the death of the latter, as follows:--

"In 1811, my old schoolmate and form-fellow, Robert Peel, the Irish secretary, told me that he saw me in St. James Street. I was then in Turkey. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to his brother a person across the street, and said, 'There is the man I took for Byron.' His brother answered, 'Why, it is Byron, and no one else.' I was at this time _seen_ (by them?) to write my name in the Palace Book! I was then ill of a malaria fever. If I had died," adds Byron, "here would have been a ghost story established."

Dr. Johnson says, "An honest old printer named Edward Cave had seen a ghost at St. John's Gate." Of course, the old man succumbed to the apparition.

THE GHOST OF CONSCIENCE.

I have yet to find the record of a good man seeing what he believed to be a ghostly manifestation. It is only the guilty in conscience who conjure up "horrible shadows," as pictured in Shakspeare's ghost of Banquo, as it appeared to Macbeth. What deserving scorn, what scathing contempt, were conveyed in the language of Lady Macbeth to her cowardly, conscience-stricken lord, as she thus rebuked him!--

"O, proper stuff!
This is the very painting of your fear;
This is the air-drawn dagger which you said
Led you to Duncan! O, these flaws and starts
(Impostors to true fear) would well become
A woman's story at a winter's fire,[5]
Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!
... When all's done,
You look but on a stool!"

There is a great truth embodied in a portion of the king's reply, that--

"If charnel-houses and our graves must send
Those that we bury, back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites."

The gay and dissipated Thomas Lyttleton, son of Lord George Lyttleton, and his successor in the peerage, has been the subject of "a well-authenticated ghost story, which relates that he was warned of his death three days before it happened, in 1779, while he was in a state of perfect health, and only thirty-five years of age." This is what says a biographer. Now let us present the truth of the matter.

He was a dissipated man. He was subject to fits. A gentleman present at the time of his seeing a vision, says "that he had been attacked several times by suffocative fits the month before." Here, then, was a _body diseased_. The same authority says, "It happened that he dreamed, three days before his death, that he saw a _fluttering bird_; and afterwards, that he saw (dreamed) a woman in white apparel, who said to him, 'Prepare to die; you will not exist three days.'

"His lordship was much alarmed, and called his servant, who slept in an adjoining closet, who found his master in a state of great agitation, and in a profuse perspiration."

Fear blanches the cheek; perspiration is rather a symptom of bodily weakness, and the result of a laborious dream, or even a fit. He had no fear, for, on the third day, while his lordship was at breakfast with "the two Misses Amphlett, Lord Fortescue," and the narrator, he said, lightly,--

"'If I live over to-night, _I shall have jockeyed the ghost_, for this is the third day.' That day he had another fit. He dined at five, and retired at eleven, when his servant was about to give him some prescribed rhubarb and mint-water, but his lordship, seeing him about to stir the mixture with a toothpick, exclaimed,--

"'You slovenly dog, go and fetch a teaspoon.'

"On the servant's return, he found his master in another fit, and, the pillow being high, his chin bore on his windpipe, when the servant, instead of relieving his lordship from his perilous position, ran away for help; but on his return, found his master dead."

He had strangled. Is it anything strange that a dissipated, weakened man should die after having a score of suffocative fits? It had been more surprising if he had survived them. Then, as respecting the dream, it was the result of a "mind diseased."

There was evidence that his lordship had seduced the Misses Amphlett, and prevailed upon them to leave their mother; and he is said to have admitted, before his death, that the woman seen in his dream was the mother of the unfortunate girls, and that she died of grief, through the disgrace and desertion of her children, about the time that the guilty seducer saw her in the vision. How could his dreams but have been disturbed, with the load of guilt and remorse that he ought to have had resting upon his conscience? The "fluttering bird" was the first form that the wretched mother assumed in his vision, as a bird might flutter about the prison bars that confined her darling offspring. The more natural form of the mother finally appeared to the guilty seducer, and to dream that he heard a voice is no unusual occurrence in the life of any person. The peculiar words amount to nothing. Lyttleton gave them no serious thoughts, and it was an accident of bodily position that caused his sudden death. The whole thing seems to be too flimsy for even a respectable "ghost story."

THE BISHOP SEES A GHOST!

An amusing as well as instructive ghost story is related by Horace Walpole, the indolent, luxurious satirist of fashionable and political contemporaries, whose twenty thousand a year enabled him to live at his ease, "coquetting haughtily with literature and literary men, at his tasty Gothic toy-house at Strawberry Hill."

He relates that the good old Bishop of Chichester was awakened in his palace at an early hour in the morning by his chamber door opening, when a female figure, clothed in white, softly entered the apartment, and quietly took a seat near him. The prelate, who, with "his household, was a disbeliever in ghosts" and spirits, said he was not at all frightened, but, rising in his bed, said, in a tone of authority,--

"Who are you?"

"The presence in the room" made no reply. The bishop repeated the question,--

"Who are you?"

The ghost only heaved a deep sigh, and, while the bishop rang the bell, to call his slumbering servant, her ghostship quietly drew some old "papers from its ghost of a pocket," and commenced reading them to herself.

After the bishop had kept on ringing for the stupid servant, the form arose, thrust the papers out of sight, and left as noiselessly and sedately as she had arrived.

"Well, what have you seen?" asked the bishop, when the servants were aroused.

"Seen, my lord?"

"Ay, seen! or who--what was the woman who has been here?"

"Woman, my lord?"

(It is said one of the fellows smiled, that a woman should have been in the aged bishop's bed-chamber in the night.)

When the bishop had related what he had seen, the domestics apprehended that his lordship had been dreaming, against which the good man protested, and only told what his eyes had beheld. The story that the bishop had been visited by a ghost soon got well circulated, which greatly "diverted the ungodly, at the good prelate's expense, till finally it reached the ears of the keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed that a female lunatic had escaped from his custody on that night" (in light apparel), who, finding the gates and doors of the palace open, had marched directly to his lordship's chamber. The deponent further stated that the lunatic was _always reading a bundle of papers_.

"There are known," says Walpole, "stories of ghosts, solemnly authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested by the father of our own church."

MUSICAL GHOSTS.

We occasionally _hear_ of this kind, but seldom, if ever, _see_ them. An old lady of Adams, Mass., came to the writer in a state bordering on monomania. She stated that at about _three o'clock_ in the night she would awake and distinctly hear bells ringing at a distance. She would awake her husband, and often compel him to arise and listen "till the poor man was almost out of patience with the annoyance;" not of the bells, for he heard none, but of being continually "wakened because of her whim," as he stated. A brief medical treatment for the disease which caused the vibration of the tympanum dispelled the illusion of bells.

THE PIANO-FORTE GHOST.

A family residing, three years since, but a few miles out of Boston, used to occasionally, during summer only, hear a note or two of the piano strike at the dead hour of the night. A Catholic servant girl and an excellent cook left their situations in consequence of the ghostly music. In vain the family removed the instrument to another position in the room. The musical sounds would startle them from their midnight slumbers.

One thing very remarkable occurred after changing the piano: the sound, which only transpired occasionally, with no regularity as to time, would always begin with the high notes, and end with the lower. Finally, the family--I cannot say why--removed to the city, and the house was sold. The deed of conveyance did not include the ghost, but he remained with the premises, nevertheless. The writer has seen him!

"O, what a pretty cat!" exclaimed a child of the new occupant of the haunted house, on discovering the domestic animal which the late possessor had left.

"Yes; and she looks so very domestic and knowing, she may stay, if no one comes for her, and you'll have her for a playfellow," replied the mother.

A few nights after their settlement, the new family were startled by hearing the piano sound! No particular tune, but it was surely the piano notes that had been distinctly and repeatedly heard. A search revealed nothing. The piano was kept closed thereafter, and no further annoyance occurred, until one night when the company had lingered till nearly midnight, and the instrument had been left open, the sound again occurred. The gentleman quickly lighted a lamp, ran down stairs, and closing the door leading to the connecting room, he found the cat secreted beneath the piano. The instrument was purposely left open the following night, and a watch set, when, no sooner was all quiet, than the cat entered, and leaped upon the piano keys. After touching them a few times with her fore paws, she jumped down, and hid beneath the instrument. "The cat was out." Only one thing remained for explanation, viz., why the change of sound occurred after removing the piano by the first occupants of the house. It occurred in summer. They removed the piano so that the cat, entering a side window, usually left a little raised, had necessarily jumped upon the high keys.

If anybody has got a good ghost, spirit, or witch about his premises, the writer would like to investigate it.

The following silly item is just going the rounds of the press:--

"A HAUNTED HOUSE.

"The first floor of Mrs. Roundy's house, at Lynn, in which the recent murder occurred, is occupied by an apparently intelligent family bearing the name of Conway, who assert that they have heard supernatural noises every night since the tragedy; and they are so sincere in their belief that they are preparing to vacate in favor of their 'uncanny' visitors."

There's nothing to it to investigate.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT WITCHES.

My colored boy, Dennis, assures me that an old woman in Norfolk, Va., having some spite against him, "did something to him that sort o' bewitched him; got some animal into him, like." The symptoms are those of _ascarides_, but I could not persuade him to take medicine therefor.

"'Tain't no use, sir," he replied, solemnly; "I knowed she done it; I feels it kinder workin' in yer (placing his hand on his stomach); what med'cine neber'll reach."

Neither reason nor ridicule will "budge" him. He knows he's bewitched!

WITCHES IN THE CREAM.

Through all the long, long winter's day,
And half the dreary night,
We churned, and yet no butter came:
The cream looked thin and white.

Next morning, with our hopes renewed,
The task began again;
We churned, and churned, till back and arms
And head did ache with pain.

The cream rose up, then sulking fell,
Grew thick, and then grew thin;
It splashed and spattered in our eyes,
On clothes, and nose, and chin.

We churned it fast, and churned it slow,
And stirred it round and round;
Yet all the livelong, weary day,
Was heard the dasher's sound.

The sun sank in the gloomy west,
The moon rose ghastly pale;
And still we churned, with courage low,
And hopes about to fail,--

When in walked Granny Dean, who heard,
With wonder and amaze,
Our troubles, as she crossed herself,
And in the fire did gaze.