"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."

"Oh!" said I, something 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 "Oh!"
and ask if I might be favoured 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.
Coma 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 favoured 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 vapours 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 quartett
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 colours 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 that was shunned by the village,
to which my eye was guided by a church spire
some half a mile off — a house that nobody would
take. And the natural inference was, that it
had the reputation of being a haunted house.

No period within the four-and-twenty hours
of day and night, is so solemn to me, as the
early morning. In the summer time, I often
rise very early, and repair to my room to
do a day's work before breakfast, and I am
always on those occasions deeply impressed by
the stillness and solitude around me. Besides
that there is something awful in the being
surrounded by familiar faces asleep — in the
knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to
whom we are dearest, are profoundly
unconscious of us, in an impassive state anticipative of
that mysterious condition to which we are all
tending — the stopped life, the broken threads
of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book,
the unfinished but abandoned occupation, all
are images of Death. The tranquillity of
the hour is the tranquillity of Death. The
colour and the chill have the same association.
Even a certain air that familiar household
objects take upon them when they first
emerge from the shadows of the night into
the morning, of being newer, and as they
used to be long ago, has its counterpart in the
subsidence of the worn face of maturity or age,
in death, into the old youthful look. Moreover,
I once saw the apparition of my father, at this
hour. He was alive and well, and nothing ever
came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting
with his back towards me, on a seat that stood
beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand,
and whether he was slumbering or grieving, I
could not discern. Amazed to see him there, I
sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and
watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to
him more than once. As he did not move then,
I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his