see a ghost, but you are ready to see one, or to make one." At such a
moment, think of the scene depicted by Coleridge:--

"'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high;
The dead men stood together.

All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the moon did glitter.

The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray."

With this weird tale in his mind in the mystic stillness of midnight
would an imaginative man be likely to deny the reality of the spirit
world? The chances are that he would be spellbound; or, if he had
breath enough, would cry out--

"Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!"

"In the year 1421, the widow of Ralph Cranbourne, of Dipmore End, in
the parish of Sandhurst, Berks, was one midnight alarmed by a noise in
her bedchamber, and, looking up, she saw at her bedfoot the appearance
of a skeleton (which she verily believed was her husband) nodding and
talking to her upon its fingers, or finger bones, after the manner of
a dumb person. Whereupon she was so terrified, that after striving to
scream aloud, which she could not, for her tongue clave to her mouth,
she fell backward as in a swoon; yet not so insensible withal but she
could see that at this the figure became greatly agitated and
distressed, and would have clasped her, but upon her appearance of
loathing it desisted, only moving its jaw upward and downward, as if
it would cry for help but could not for want of its parts of speech.
At length, she growing more and more faint, and likely to die of fear,
the spectre suddenly, as if at a thought, began to swing round its
hand, which was loose at the wrist, with a brisk motion, and the
finger bones being long and hard, and striking sharply against each
other, made a loud noise like to the springing of a watchman's rattle.
At which alarm, the neighbours running in, stoutly armed, as against
thieves or murderers, the spectre suddenly departed."[89]

"His shoes they were coffins, his dim eye reveal'd
The gleam of a grave-lamp with vapours oppress'd;
And a dark crimson necklace of blood-drops congeal'd
Reflected each bone that jagg'd out of his breast."[90]

[Illustration]

WELCOME TO CHRISTMAS.

By MARY HOWITT.

He comes--the brave old Christmas!
His sturdy steps I hear;
We will give him a hearty welc