The Haunted House - The Mortals In The House

Scary Books: Three Ghost Stories
: Charles Dickens

Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by

none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make

acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas

piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was

no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted

circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that:

I had come to it direc from a railway station: it was not more

than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood

outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see

the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley.

I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I

doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people-

-and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say

that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn

morning.



The manner of my lighting on it was this.



I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop

by the way, to look at the house. My health required a temporary

residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and

who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to

suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight,

and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of

window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen

asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the

usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to sleep at

all;--upon which question, in the first imbecility of that

condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by

battle with the man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had,

through the night--as that opposite man always has--several legs too

many, and all of them too long. In addition to this unreasonable

conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil

and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking

notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related

to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned

myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was

in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring

straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed

gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became

unbearable.



It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I

had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country,

and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the

stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller

and said:



"I BEG your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in

me"? For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my

travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.



The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if

the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a

lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:



"In you, sir?--B."



"B, sir?" said I, growing warm.



"I have nothing to do with you, sir," returned the gentleman; "pray

let me listen--O."



He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.



At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication

with the guard, is a serious position. The thought came to my

relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a

Rapper: one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest

respect, but whom I don't believe in. I was going to ask him the

question, when he took the bread out of my mouth.



"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."



"O!" said I, somewhat 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 "O!" 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. COME 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 quartet 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 shoulder,

as I thought--and there was no such thing.



For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly

statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any

house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning;

and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage

than then.



I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon

my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his

door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the

house.



"Is it haunted?" I asked.



The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, "I say

nothing."



"Then it IS haunted?"



"Well!" cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the

appearance of desperation--"I wouldn't sleep in it."



"Why not?"



"If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to

ring 'em; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang

'em; and all sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there; why,

then," said the landlord, "I'd sleep in that house."



"Is anything seen there?"



The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former

appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for "Ikey!"



The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red

face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a

turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with

mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to

be in a fair way--if it were not pruned--of covering his head and

overunning his boots.



"This gentleman wants to know," said the landlord, "if anything's

seen at the Poplars."



"'Ooded woman with a howl," said Ikey, in a state of great

freshness.



"Do you mean a cry?"



"I mean a bird, sir."



"A hooded woman with an owl. Dear me! Did you ever see her?"



"I seen the howl."



"Never the woman?"



"Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together."



"Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl?"



"Lord bless you, sir! Lots."



"Who?"



"Lord bless you, sir! Lots."



"The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his

shop?"



"Perkins? Bless you, Perkins wouldn't go a-nigh the place. No!"

observed the young man, with considerable feeling; "he an't

overwise, an't Perkins, but he an't such a fool as THAT."



(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins's knowing

better.)



"Who is--or who was--the hooded woman with the owl? Do you know?"



"Well!" said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he

scratched his head with the other, "they say, in general, that she

was murdered, and the howl he 'ooted the while."



This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except

that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see,

had been took with fits and held down in 'em, after seeing the

hooded woman. Also, that a personage, dimly described as "a hold

chap, a sort of one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby,

unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, 'Why not?

and even if so, mind your own business,'" had encountered the hooded

woman, a matter of five or six times. But, I was not materially

assisted by these witnesses: inasmuch as the first was in

California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by

the landlord), Anywheres.



Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries,

between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier

of the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live;

and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything

of them; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing

of bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with

the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules

that I am permitted to understand, than I had been able, a little

while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-

traveller to the chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived

in two haunted houses--both abroad. In one of these, an old Italian

palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted

indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that account,

I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly:

notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms,

which were never used, and possessed, in one large room in which I

sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and next to which I

slept, a haunted chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted

these considerations to the landlord. And as to this particular

house having a bad name, I reasoned with him, Why, how many things

had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names,

and did he not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper

in the village that any weird-looking old drunken tinker of the

neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in time

to be suspected of that commercial venture! All this wise talk was

perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to confess, and

was as dead a failure as ever I made in my life.



To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about the haunted

house, and was already half resolved to take it. So, after

breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins's brother-in-law (a whip and

harness maker, who keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to

a most rigorous wife of the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel

persuasion), and went up to the house, attended by my landlord and

by Ikey.



Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal. The

slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were

doleful in the last degree; the house was ill-placed, ill-built,

ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It was damp, it was not free from dry

rot, there was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim

of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man's

hands whenever it's not turned to man's account. The kitchens and

offices were too large, and too remote from each other. Above

stairs and below, waste tracts of passage intervened between patches

of fertility represented by rooms; and there was a mouldy old well

with a green growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap, near the

bottom of the back-stairs, under the double row of bells. One of

these bells was labelled, on a black ground in faded white letters,

MASTER B. This, they told me, was the bell that rang the most.



"Who was Master B.?" I asked. "Is it known what he did while the

owl hooted?"



"Rang the bell," said Ikey.



I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young

man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it himself. It was a

loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very disagreeable sound. The

other bells were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to

which their wires were conducted: as "Picture Room," "Double Room,"

"Clock Room," and the like. Following Master B.'s bell to its

source I found that young gentleman to have had but indifferent

third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft,

with a corner fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly

small if he were ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-

piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The

papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with

fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up the door.

It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual condition, always made

a point of pulling the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey

could suggest why he made such a fool of himself.



Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top, I

made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished, but

sparely. Some of the furniture--say, a third--was as old as the

house; the rest was of various periods within the last half-century.

I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county

town to treat for the house. I went that day, and I took it for six

months.



It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden

sister (I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so very

handsome, sensible, and engaging). We took with us, a deaf stable-

man, my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person

called an Odd Girl. I have reason to record of the attendant last

enumerated, who was one of the Saint Lawrence's Union Female

Orphans, that she was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement.



The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw

cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was

most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of

intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested

that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2

Tuppintock's Gardens, Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of

anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid,

feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who

had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made

arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery

window, and rearing an oak.



We went, before dark, through all the natural--as opposed to

supernatural--miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports

ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and

descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was

no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it

is), there was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the

last people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the

landlord be? Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful

and exemplary. But within four hours after dark we had got into a

supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen "Eyes," and was in

hysterics.



My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to

ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left

Ikey, when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or

any one of them, for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd

Girl had "seen Eyes" (no other explanation could ever be drawn from

her), before nine, and by ten o'clock had had as much vinegar

applied to her as would pickle a handsome salmon.



I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under

these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o'clock Master

B.'s bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled

until the house resounded with his lamentations!



I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the

mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory

of Master B. Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats,

or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one

cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't know;

but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until

I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master B.'s neck--in other

words, breaking his bell short off--and silencing that young

gentleman, as to my experience and belief, for ever.



But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers

of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very

inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed

with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address

the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had

painted Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.'s

bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that

that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no

better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him and

the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in

the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a

mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible

means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied

spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?--I say I would become

emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an

address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd

Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among

us like a parochial petrifaction.



Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most

discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of an

usually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her,

but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of

the largest and most transparent tears I ever met with. Combined

with these characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those

specimens, so that they didn't fall, but hung upon her face and

nose. In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her

head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the Admirable

Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of

money. Cook, likewise, always covered me with confusion as with a

garment, by neatly winding up the session with the protest that the

Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes

regarding her silver watch.



As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was

among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. Hooded

woman? According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of

hooded women. Noises? With that contagion downstairs, I myself

have sat in the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so

many and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood

if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this

in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your own comfortable

fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with

noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your

nervous system.



I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and

there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses in

a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always

primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-

triggers. The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions

that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established

the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If

Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should

presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so

constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go

about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is

called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.



It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain to be frightened, for

the moment in one's own person, by a real owl, and then to show the

owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord

on the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and

combinations. It was in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells,

and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down

inexorably and silence it. It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let

torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and

recesses. We changed servants, and it was no better. The new set

ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better. At last, our

comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganised and wretched,

that I one night dejectedly said to my sister: "Patty, I begin to

despair of our getting people to go on with us here, and I think we

must give this up."



My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied, "No, John,

don't give it up. Don't be beaten, John. There is another way."



"And what is that?" said I.



"John," returned my sister, "if we are not to be driven out of this

house, and that for no reason whatever, that is apparent to you or

me, we must help ourselves and take the house wholly and solely into

our own hands."



"But, the servants," said I.



"Have no servants," said my sister, boldly.



Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of the

possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions. The

notion was so new to me when suggested, that I looked very doubtful.

"We know they come here to be frightened and infect one another, and

we know they are frightened and do infect one another," said my

sister.



"With the exception of Bottles," I observed, in a meditative tone.



(The deaf stable-man. I kept him in my service, and still keep him,

as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in England.)



"To be sure, John," assented my sister; "except Bottles. And what

does that go to prove? Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody

unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever

given, or taken! None."



This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired,

every night at ten o'clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no

other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail

of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I

had put myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that

minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering.

Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many

uproars. An imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his

supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble,

and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the

general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.



"And so," continued my sister, "I exempt Bottles. And considering,

John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be

kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast

about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most

reliable and willing--form a Society here for three months--wait

upon ourselves and one another--live cheerfully and socially--and

see what happens."



I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot,

and went into her plan with the greatest ardour.



We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our

measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in

whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month

unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and

mustered in the haunted house.



I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while

my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not

improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he

wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but

unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came

in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own

throat. I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun? On

his saying, "Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her," I begged

the favour of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine.



"SHE'S a true one, sir," said Ikey, after inspecting a double-

barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago. "No

mistake about HER, sir."



"Ikey," said I, "don't mention it; I have seen something in this

house."



"No, sir?" he whispered, greedily opening his eyes. "'Ooded lady,

sir?"



"Don't be frightened," said I. "It was a figure rather like you."



"Lord, sir?"



"Ikey!" said I, shaking hands with him warmly: I may say

affectionately; "if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the

greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure. And I

promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I

see it again!"



The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little

precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my

secret to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his

cap at the bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed

something very like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one

night when it had burst out ringing; and because I had remarked that

we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to

comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no injustice. He was afraid

of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would

play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity.

The Odd Girl's case was exactly similar. She went about the house

in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully,

and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the

sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I know it. It is

not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state

of mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known

to every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other

watchful experience; that it is as well established and as common a

state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted; and that

it is one of the first elements, above all others, rationally to be

suspected in, and strictly looked for, and separated from, any

question of this kind.



To return to our party. The first thing we did when we were all

assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms. That done, and every

bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined

by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if

we had been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting

party, or were shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumours

concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.: with others,

still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation,

relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went

up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to an

impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of

these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to

one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words.

We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were not

there to be deceived, or to deceive--which we considered pretty much

the same thing--and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we

would be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out

the truth. The understanding was established, that any one who

heard unusual noises in the night, and who wished to trace them,

should knock at my door; lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last

night of holy Christmas, all our individual experiences since that

then present hour of our coming together in the haunted house,

should be brought to light for the good of all; and that we would

hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on some remarkable

provocation to break silence.



We were, in number and in character, as follows:



First--to get my sister and myself out of the way--there were we

two. In the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I

drew Master B.'s. Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel,

so called after the great astronomer: than whom I suppose a better

man at a telescope does not breathe. With him, was his wife: a

charming creature to whom he had been married in the previous

spring. I thought it (under the circumstances) rather imprudent to

bring her, because there is no knowing what even a false alarm may

do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and

I must say that if she had been MY wife, I never could have left her

endearing and bright face behind. They drew the Clock Room. Alfred

Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty

for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine,

usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room

within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges I

was ever able to make, would keep from shaking, in any weather, wind

or no wind. Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be "fast"

(another word for loose, as I understand the term), but who is much

too good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have

distinguished himself before now, if his father had not

unfortunately left him a small independence of two hundred a year,

on the strength of which his only occupation in life has been to

spend six. I am in hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or

that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per

cent.; for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his

fortune is made. Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a

most intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture

Room. She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business

earnestness, and "goes in"--to use an expression of Alfred's--for

Woman's mission, Woman's rights, Woman's wrongs, and everything that

is woman's with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and

ought not to be. "Most praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper

you!" I whispered to her on the first night of my taking leave of

her at the Picture-Room door, "but don't overdo it. And in respect

of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments

being within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet

assigned to her, don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men

who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural

oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes

spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers,

aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not ALL Wolf and

Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it." However, I digress.



Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Room. We had but

three other chambers: the Corner Room, the Cupboard Room, and the

Garden Room. My old friend, Jack Governor, "slung his hammock," as

he called it, in the Corner Room. I have always regarded Jack as

the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is gray now, but as

handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago--nay, handsomer. A

portly, cheery, well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a

frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow. I

remember those under darker hair, and they look all the better for

their silver setting. He has been wherever his Union namesake

flies, has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, away in the

Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who have beamed

and brightened at the casual mention of his name, and have cried,

"You know Jack Governor? Then you know a prince of men!" That he

is! And so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were to meet

him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal's skin, you would be

vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.



Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister; but, it

fell out that he married another lady and took her to South America,

where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought

down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for,

he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling,

is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a

piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him

one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman.

Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently

as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a

world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge.

At times, there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently the

lingering result of some old illness; but, it seldom lasted many

minutes. He got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr.

Undery, my friend and solicitor: who came down, in an amateur

capacity, "to go through with it," as he said, and who plays whist

better than the whole Law List, from the red cover at the beginning

to the red cover at the end.



I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the universal

feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful

resources, was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever

ate, including unapproachable curries. My sister was pastrycook and

confectioner. Starling and I were Cook's Mate, turn and turn about,

and on special occasions the chief cook "pressed" Mr. Beaver. We

had a great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was

neglected within, and there was no ill-humour or misunderstanding

among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at least

one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed.



We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On the first night, I

was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship's lantern in his

hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me

that he "was going aloft to the main truck," to have the weathercock

down. It was a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my

attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said

somebody would be "hailing a ghost" presently, if it wasn't done.

So, up to the top of the house, where I could hardly stand for the

wind, we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver; and there Jack, lantern

and all, with Mr. Beaver after him, swarmed up to the top of a

cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon

nothing particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they

both got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I

thought they would never come down. Another night, they turned out

again, and had a chimney-cowl off. Another night, they cut a

sobbing and gulping water-pipe away. Another night, they found out

something else. On several occasions, they both, in the coolest

manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective bedroom

windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to "overhaul"

something mysterious in the garden.



The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed

anything. All we knew was, if any one's room were haunted, no one

looked the worse for it.







CHAPTER II THE GHOST IN MASTER Bedroom ROOM







When I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained

so distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to

Master B. My speculations about him were uneasy and manifold.

Whether his Christian name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having

been born in Leap Year), Bartholomew, or Bill. Whether the initial

letter belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black,

Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird. Whether he was a foundling,

and had been baptized B. Whether he was a lion-hearted boy, and B.

was short for Briton, or for Bull. Whether he could possibly have

been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who brightened my own

childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant Mother Bunch?



With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much. I also

carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of

the deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he

couldn't have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good

at Bowling, had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood

Bathed from a Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth,

Brighton, or Broadstairs, like a Bounding Billiard Ball?



So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.



It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a

dream of Master B., or of anything belonging to him. But, the

instant I awoke from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my

thoughts took him up, and roamed away, trying to attach his initial

letter to something that would fit it and keep it quiet.



For six nights, I had been worried this in Master B.'s room, when I

began to perceive that things were going wrong.



The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning

when it was but just daylight and no more. I was standing shaving

at my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and

amazement, that I was shaving--not myself--I am fifty--but a boy.

Apparently Master B.!



I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there. I looked

again in the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression

of a boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get

one. Extremely troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room,

and went back to the looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and

complete the operation in which I had been disturbed. Opening my

eyes, which I had shut while recovering my firmness, I now met in

the glass, looking straight at me, the eyes of a young man of four

or five and twenty. Terrified by this new ghost, I closed my eyes,

and made a strong effort to recover myself. Opening them again, I

saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who has long been

dead. Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did see in

my life.



Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I

determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the

present general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious

thoughts, I retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter

some new experience of a spectral character. Nor was my preparation

needless, for, waking from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o'clock in

the morning, what were my feelings to find that I was sharing my bed

with the skeleton of Master B.!



I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also. I then heard a

plaintive voice saying, "Where am I? What is become of me?" and,

looking hard in that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B.



The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or rather,

was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-

salt cloth, made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed

that these buttons went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the

young ghost, and appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill

round his neck. His right hand (which I distinctly noticed to be

inky) was laid upon his stomach; connecting this action with some

feeble pimples on his countenance, and his general air of nausea, I

concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a boy who had habitually

taken a great deal too much medicine.



"Where am I?" said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice. "And

why was I born in the Calomel days, and why did I have all that

Calomel given me?"



I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn't

tell him.



"Where is my little sister," said the ghost, "and where my angelic

little wife, and where is the boy I went to school with?"



I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to

take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with. I

represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human

experience, come out well, when discovered. I urged that I myself

had, in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school

with, and none of them had at all answered. I expressed my humble

belief that that boy never did answer. I represented that he was a

mythic character, a delusion, and a snare. I recounted how, the

last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party behind a wall

of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every possible

subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely Titanic. I

related how, on the strength of our having been together at "Old

Doylance's," he had asked himself to breakfast with me (a social

offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak embers of

belief in Doylance's boys, I had let him in; and how, he had proved

to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of Adam

with 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 announcement.)



"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 Sinbad 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. "O, 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 Bule.



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 Bule, 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 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 the favourite Sultana;

the first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours."



Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to

her seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me, in the course

of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-

natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house,

and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face

there was always more or less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule's

hand after supper, a little note to that effect; dwelling on the

black-lead as being in a manner deposited by the finger of

Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour, the celebrated chief of

the Blacks of the Hareem.



There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution,

as there are in all combinations. The other creature showed himself

of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne,

pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself

before the Caliph; wouldn't call him Commander of the Faithful;

spoke of him slightingly and inconsistently as a mere "chap;" said

he, the other creature, "wouldn't play"--Play!--and was otherwise

coarse and offensive. This meanness of disposition was, however,

put down by the general indignation of an united Seraglio, and I

became blessed in the smiles of eight of the fairest of the

daughters of men.



The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking

another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a

legend among the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little

round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her

shawl. But every day after dinner, for an hour, we were all

together, and then the Favourite and the rest of the Royal Hareem

competed who should most beguile the leisure of the Serene Haroun

reposing from the cares of State--which were generally, as in most

affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander of the

Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.



On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the

Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for

that officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never

acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation.

In the first place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the

Caliph, even when Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger

(Miss Pipson's pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment,

was never to be quite satisfactorily accounted for. In the second

place, his breaking out into grinning exclamations of "Lork you

pretties!" was neither Eastern nor respectful. In the third place,

when specially instructed to say "Bismillah!" he always said

"Hallelujah!" This officer, unlike his class, was too good-humoured

altogether, kept his mouth open far too wide, expressed approbation

to an incongruous extent, and even once--it was on the occasion of

the purchase of the Fair Circassian for five hundred thousand purses

of gold, and cheap, too--embraced the Slave, the Favourite, and the

Caliph, all round. (Parenthetically let me say God bless Mesrour,

and may there have been sons and daughters on that tender bosom,

softening many a hard day since!)



Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine

what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had

known, when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, that

she was walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and

Mahomedanism. I believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with

which the contemplation of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state,

inspired us, and a grim sense prevalent among us that there was a

dreadful power in our knowledge of what Miss Griffin (who knew all

things that could be learnt out of book) didn't know, were the main-

spring of the preservation of our secret. It was wonderfully kept,

but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal. The danger and escape

occurred upon a Sunday. We were all ten ranged in a conspicuous

part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head--as we

were every Sunday--advertising the establishment in an unsecular

sort of way--when the description of Solomon in his domestic glory

happened to be read. The moment that monarch was thus referred to,

conscience whispered me, "Thou, too, Haroun!" The officiating

minister had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving

him the appearance of reading personally at me. A crimson blush,

attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my features. The Grand

Vizier became more dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened

as if the sunset of Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces. At

this portentous time the awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed

the children of Islam. My own impression was, that Church and State

had entered into a conspiracy with Miss Griffin to expose us, and

that we should all be put into white sheets, and exhibited in the

centre aisle. But, so Westerly--if I may be allowed the expression

as opposite to Eastern associations--was Miss Griffin's sense of

rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we were saved.



I have called the Seraglio, united. Upon the question, solely,

whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of

kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates

divided. Zobeide asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to

scratch, and the fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a

green baize bag, originally designed for books. On the other hand,

a young antelope of transcendent beauty from the fruitful plains of

Camden Town (whence she had been brought, by traders, in the half-

yearly caravan that crossed the intermediate desert after the

holidays), held more liberal opinions, but stipulated for limiting

the benefit of them to that dog, and son of a dog, the Grand Vizier-

-who had no rights, and was not in question. At length, the

difficulty was compromised by the installation of a very youthful

slave as Deputy. She, raised upon a stool, officially received upon

her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun for other

Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the Ladies

of the Hareem.



And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I

became heavily troubled. I began to think of my mother, and what

she would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most

beautiful of the daughters of men, but all unexpected. I thought of

the number of beds we made up at our house, of my father's income,

and of the baker, and my despondency redoubled. The Seraglio and

malicious Vizier, divining the cause of their Lord's unhappiness,

did their utmost to augment it. They professed unbounded fidelity,

and declared that they would live and die with him. Reduced to the

utmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment, I lay

awake, for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful lot. In my

despair, I think I might have taken an early opportunity of falling

on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing my resemblance to Solomon,

and praying to be dealt with according to the outraged laws of my

country, if an unthought-of means of escape had not opened before

me.



One day, we were out walking, two and two--on which occasion the

Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the

turn-pike, and if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the

beauties of the Hareem, to have him bowstrung in the course of the

night--and it happened that our hearts were veiled in gloom. An

unaccountable action on the part of the antelope had plunged the

State into disgrace. That charmer, on the representation that the

previous day was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent

in a hamper for its celebration (both baseless assertions), had

secretly but most pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring

princes and princesses to a ball and supper: with a special

stipulation that they were "not to be fetched till twelve." This

wandering of the antelope's fancy, led to the surprising arrival at

Miss Griffin's door, in divers equipages and under various escorts,

of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top step

in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears. At

the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these ceremonies,

the antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in; and

at every new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more

distracted, that at last she had been seen to tear her front.

Ultimate capitulation on the part of the offender, had been followed

by solitude in the linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to

all, of vindictive length, in which Miss Griffin had used

expressions: Firstly, "I believe you all of you knew of it;"

Secondly, "Every one of you is as wicked as another;" Thirdly, "A

pack of little wretches."



Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and I

especially, with my. Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was

in a very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss

Griffin, and, after walking on at her side for a little while and

talking with her, looked at me. Supposing him to be a minion of the

law, and that my hour was come, I instantly ran away, with the

general purpose of making for Egypt.



The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast as

my legs would carry me (I had an impression that the first turning

on the left, and round by the public-house, would be the shortest

way to the Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless

Vizier ran after me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a

corner, like a sheep, and cut me off. Nobody scolded me when I was

taken and brought back; Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning

gentleness, This was very curious! Why had I run away when the

gentleman looked at me?



If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should have

made no answer; having no breath, I certainly made none. Miss

Griffin and the strange man took me between them, and walked me back

to the palace in a sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn't help

feeling, with astonishment) in culprit state.



When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss

Griffin called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky

guards of the Hareem. Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed

tears. "Bless you, my precious!" said that officer, turning to me;

"your Pa's took bitter bad!"



I asked, with a fluttered heart, "Is he very ill?"



"Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!" said the good Mesrour,

kneeling down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head

to rest on, "your Pa's dead!"



Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio vanished;

from that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest

of the daughters of men.



I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, and

we had a sale there. My own little bed was so superciliously looked

upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily called "The Trade," that a

brass coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to

be put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song. So

I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a

dismal song it must have been to sing!



Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys; where

everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being

enough; where everybody, largo and small, was cruel; where the boys

knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had

fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, "Going, going,

gone!" I never whispered in that wretched place that I had been

Haroun, or had had a Seraglio: for, I knew that if I mentioned my

reverses, I should be so worried, that I should have to drown myself

in the muddy pond near the playground, which looked like the beer.



Ah me, ah me! No other ghost has haunted the boy's room, my

friends, since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my own

childhood, the ghost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy

belief. Many a time have I pursued the phantom: never with this

man's stride of mine to come up with it, never with these man's

hands of mine to touch it, never more to this man's heart of mine to

hold it in its purity. And here you see me working out, as

cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in the glass

a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with

the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.