prettier and more
Shakspearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers,--where even
the pale, dry, sadly-sweet "everlasting" could not grow, but all was
bare and blasted. The second was a mark in one of the public buildings
near my home,--the college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor.
I do not think many persons are aware of the existence of this
mark,--little having been said about the story in print, as it was
considered very desirable, for the sake of the Institution, to hush it
up. In the northwest corner, and on the level of the third or fourth
story, there are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, but
not to be mistaken. A considerable portion of that corner must have been
carried away, from within outward. It was an unpleasant affair; and I
do not care to repeat the particulars; but some young men had been using
sacred things in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which
was variously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in the
chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the
building there could be no question; and the zig-zag line, where the
mortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible. The
queer burnt spots, called the "Devil's footsteps," had never attracted
attention before this time, though there is no evidence that they had
not existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a "Goody," so
called, or sweeper, who was positive on the subject, but had a strange
horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to know
something.--I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of
impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with
untenanted, locked upper-chambers, and a most ghostly garret,--with the
"Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house and in front of it
the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place
which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that
one of them was epileptic from that day forward, and another, after a
dreadful season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became renowned
for his ascetic sanctity.

There were other circumstances that kept up the impression produced
by these two singular facts I have just mentioned. There was a dark
storeroom, on looking through the key-hole of which, I could dimly see a
heap of chairs and tables, and other four-footed things, which seemed
to me to have rushed in ther