on my head
That I hed been nigh to the gates o' the dead.

"An' 'Where wuz Josh Clark?' did you say? I don't know.
He never wuz seen in the diggins below,
Ner heerd of in them parts ag'in, fer I know
He'd a-swung to the limb that come fust in the way;
Fer the boys in them days hed little to say,
But wuz mighty in doin'. So he got away.

"So it seems that some people is jist so depraved
There ain't a thing in 'em that ort to be saved.
'Twuz jist so with Josh, who I loved as a son;
He lived fer hisself an' fer hisself alone.
'N' 'at's why I remarked at the fust of this yarn,
The thing 'at it's cost me so dearly to larn--'I panned him out over
an' over ag'in,
But found nary sign of a color.'"

THE WRAITH OF THE BLIZZARD

The night it was gloomy, the wind it was high;
And hollowly howling it swept through the sky.
--_Southey_.

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind raved?
--_Whittier_.

THE WRAITH OF THE BLIZZARD

We dread the unseen. Fear is always enervating; sometimes even deadly.
Who has not fearsomely anticipated that which never came and wasted
valuable energy and time in building bridges none are ever to cross?
The surgical patient actually suffers more at sight of somber
white-clad nurses, and the thought of the operation, than he does from
the ordeal itself. It may be that we subconsciously dread the helpless
state of unconsciousness into which the anaesthetic plunges us, and
hesitate at a trip, no matter how short, into death's borderland,
preferring to keep our own hands as long as possible on the helm of
the ship of life.

I wonder why we become terror-stricken at the thought of ghosts. The
untutored child needs only a hint to make him shy at the dark; and a
lad has to be pretty large before he can walk far at night without
once in a while looking behind him, just to be certain there is
nothing following.

Thus spirits, spooks, bogies, wraiths, and other uncanny apparitions
are unintentional inheritances of the race; a race that knows little
more about the impending and impinging unseen than did the Saxon
fathers who gave us our spooky speech.

I once had an experience which grows in interest as the years pass by.
I had no fear or thought of fear that night, and the scenes of the