of the deceased during his or her mortal
career. If Mr. George Cruikshank had been
aware of this he would not have attempted
(being the thousand and first on the roll of
those who have attempted) to refute the belief in
ghosts, by arguing that clothed ghosts prove an
unwillingness on the part of a pair of pantaloons
to remain quietly in a chest of drawers, quite as
great as that of a spirit to sleep within his allotted
portion of the cemetery.

Such an unwillingness on the part of mere
creations of the tailor would, as he properly
urges, be absurd; but his argument melts into
thin air when we show, not that clothes have
ghosts, but that ghosts have their own spiritual
wardrobe, often of a most costly material. Ask
one of the estimable laundresses, who hurried
their steps as they passed the awful domicile,
whether they ever believed that Dirty Suke (the
flattering name bestowed upon the bone-picker)
on any occasion dreamed of diminishing her
vast treasures by the purchase of a silk gown,
and a laugh of derision would be the reply.
Her rags fluttered lightly about her, as leaves
in the autumn breeze, but that is no reason
that the spiritual silk, wherewith her ghost
increased its powers of annoyance, should not
be of the richest sort. Suke, though in tatters,
was always known to be a proud old gal,
and if that did not entitle her ghost to wear
brocade, what becomes of all argument on moral
premises?

There were some sharp-sighted wights who,
if their testimony were to be trusted, had not
only heard but had actually seen objects of terror
in the objectionable house. A lad of nineteen
had seen a mourning coach and four horses issue
from the chimney at midnight and run through
the sky, leaving a trail of fire behind it; but as
this lad happened to be small in intellect and
great in mendacity—often affirming that his aunt
in Devonshire kept three live unicorns, and that
his godfather had three millions of hard sovereigns
in his money-box—his evidence was received
with caution, even among the most credulous.
A red-faced man, strange to the neighbourhood,
who had seen the door suddenly open,
and a white face peep out, was heard for a little
while with considerable respect, but the force of
his testimony was much weakened by the
discovery that he was not at all clear about the
house at which the phenomenon appeared. Of
all the seers the most trustworthy was an old
apple-woman, who confined herself to the general
statement that she had once looked at the upper
windows of the house, and had seen—something;
for even the most sceptical could hardly
reject this statement with utter disbelief.
However, the stories about sights were on the
whole less popular than those about sounds,
and an elderly dame, who all her life had been
a firm believer in the rustling silk, was one
of the first to raise a shriek of incredulity when
she heard of the white face and the mourning
coach.

The effect of public opinion on the marketable
value of the house was practical enough.
The owner of the property, who had tried to
restore it to good repute by offering it for a
short term of years at the low rent of nothing
a quarter, with a clause that he himself would
keep it in repair, could not, even on those easy
conditions, find a permanent tenant, and had
abandoned it in despair, so that for a long time
the frontage exhibited a combination of smashed
glass and accumulated dirt, that was quite
sufficient to breed a collection of ghost stories, if
none had been already in circulation. Gradually,
indeed, the ghost itself had ceased to be the
hero of popular romance, and the successive
occupants, who one after another had tried
the house for very short periods, stepped into
the foreground. A lamplighter, who had taken
the premises on the very reasonable conditions
above described, had placed his lantern on the
parlour floor, and saw that it cast a human
shadow on the opposite wall without the aid of
an intervening substance, was often the theme
of discussion, and his assertion that he would
not have remained in the house one night more
for the Injies of gold, was frequently cited as a
proof of a pious and unmercenary disposition.
A journeyman baker, from whose bed the
clothes were perpetually pulled, as soon as he
began to doze off, was also regarded with universal
commiseration, while the additional fact
that his little boy had received a smart caning
from an invisible hand, was recorded with
triumphant glee by the schoolmaster's faction,
though it was received with a doubtful smile by
the party who voted for the bone-picking old
woman. However, these and other tenants were
quite as legendary as the ghost itself. No one
seems to have known when the house had been
inhabited by the lamplighter, and when the
nocturnal rest of the baker had been disturbed.
An old lady, whose cousin recollected
the lamplighter as a fine man with sandy
whiskers, was the sole link between the actual
world and the earlier occupants of the troubled
house.

These tenants, then, belonged to a mythical
period, but as time passed on the house found an
occupant, about whose existence there could not
be the slightest doubt, and who eagerly took
the premises at a rent which, though very moderate,
was considerably higher than nothing. For
the son of the extremely liberal landlord, conceiving
that his father's policy had conduced
rather to deteriorate than to improve the property,
had often publicly declared that, rather
than take less than £30 per annum, he would let
the troubled edifice remain empty till the day of
judgment. The substantial occupant was a lively
and very industrious Frenchman, who met all
the tales of trouble with the irresistible argument
that he had no time to waste upon such
bêtises, adding that he would rather pay £30 for
the house with its chains and its silks than £50
for a similar establishment without such
incumbrances, and declaring that if the ghost
took any liberties with his bed-clothes, a trial
of physical force would be the speedy consequence.