inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and
with a proposition that the Bank of England
should, on pain of being abolished, instantly
strike off and circulate, God knows how many
thousand millions of ten-and-sixpenny notes.

The ghost heard me in silence, and with a
fixed stare. "Barber!" it apostrophised me
when I had finished.

"Barber?" I repeated—for I am not of that
profession.

"Condemned," said the ghost, "to shave a
constant change of customers—now, me—now, a
young man—now, thyself as thou art—now, thy
father—now, thy grandfather; condemned, too,
to lie down with a skeleton every night, and to
rise with it every morning—"

(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announce
ment).

"Barber! Pursue me!"

I had felt, even before the words were
uttered, that I was under a spell to pursue the
phantom. I immediately did so, and was in
Master B.'s room no longer.

Most people know what long and fatiguing
night journeys had been forced upon the witches
who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told the
exact truth—particularly as they were always
assisted with leading questions, and the Torture
was always ready. I asseverate that, during my
occupation of Master B.'s room, I was taken by
the ghost that haunted it, on expeditions fully
as long and wild as any of those. Assuredly, I
was presented to no shabby old man with a
goat's horns and tail (something between Pan
and an old clothesman), holding conventional
receptions, as stupid as those of real life and less
decent; but, I came upon other things which
appeared to me to have more meaning.

Confident that I speak the truth and shall be
believed, I declare without hesitation that I
followed the ghost, in the first instance on a broom-
stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse. The
very smell of the animal's paint—especially when
I brought it out, by making him warm—I am
ready to swear to. I followed the ghost, afterwards,
in a hackney coach; an institution with
the peculiar smell of which, the present generation
is unacquainted, but to which I am again
ready to swear as a combination of stable, dog
with the mange, and very old bellows. (In this,
I appeal to previous generations to confirm or
refute me.) I pursued the phantom, on a headless
donkey: at least, upon a donkey who was so
interested in the state of his stomach that his
head was always down there, investigating it;
on ponies, expressly born to kick up behind;
on roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the
first cab—another forgotten institution where the
fare regularly got into bed, and was tucked up
with the driver.

Not to trouble you with a detailed account of
all my travels in pursuit of the ghost of Master
B., which were longer and more wonderful than
those of Sindbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to
one experience from which you may judge of many.

I was marvellously changed. I was myself,
yet not myself. I was conscious of something
within me, which has been the same all through
my life, and which I have always recognised
under all its phases and varieties as never altering,
and yet I was not the I who had gone to
bed in Master B.'s room. I had the smoothest
of faces and the shortest of legs, and I had
taken another creature like myself, also with the
smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs,
behind a door, and was confiding to him a
proposition of the most astounding nature.

This proposition was, that we should have a
Seraglio.

The other creature assented warmly. He had
no notion of respectability, neither had I. It
was the custom of the East, it was the way of
the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have
the corrupted name again for once, it is so
scented with sweet memories!), the usage was
highly laudable, and most worthy of imitation.
"Oh, yes! Let us," said the other creature with
a jump, "have a Seraglio."

It was not because we entertained the faintest
doubts of the meritorious character of the
Oriental establishment we proposed to import,
that we perceived it must be kept a secret from
Miss Griffin. It was because we knew Miss
Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies, and
incapable of appreciating the greatness of the great
Haroun. Mystery impenetrably shrouded from
Miss Griffin then, let us entrust it to Miss Bale.

We were ten in Miss Griffin's establishment
by Hampstead Ponds; eight ladies and two
gentlemen. Miss Bule, whom I judge to have
attained the ripe age of eight or nine, took the
lead in society. I opened the subject to her in the
course of the day, and proposed that she should
become the Favourite.

Miss Bale, after struggling with the diffidence
so natural to, and charming in, her adorable sex,
expressed herself as flattered by the idea, but
wished to know how it was proposed to
provide for Miss Pipson? Miss Bule—who
was understood to have vowed towards that
young lady, a friendship, halves, and no secrets,
until death, on the Church Service and Lessons
complete in two volumes with case and
lock—Miss Bule said she could not, as the
friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me,
that Pipson was not one of the common.

Now, Miss Pipson, having curly light hair
and blue eyes (which was my idea of anything
mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I
promptly replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in
the light of a Fair Circassian.

"And what then?" Miss Bule pensively
asked.

I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant,
brought to me veiled, and purchased as a
slave.

[The other creature had already fallen into
the second male place in the State, and was set
apart for Grand Vizier. He afterwards resisted
this disposal of events, but had his hair pulled
until he yielded].

"Shall I not be jealous?" Miss Bule
inquired, casting down her eyes.

"Zobeide, no," I replied; "you will ever be