ts Reserved

CONTENTS.

THE GHOST. _William D. O'Connor_

THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS _Amelia B. Edwards_

THE SIGNAL-MAN _Charles Dickens_

THE HAUNTED SHIPS _Allan Cunningham_

A RAFT THAT NO MAN MADE _Robert T. S. Lowell_

THE INVISIBLE PRINCESS _Francis O' Connor_

THE ADVOCATE'S WEDDING-DAY _Catherine Crowe_

THE BIRTHMARK _Nathaniel Hawthorne_

THE GHOST.

BY WILLIAM D. O'CONNOR.

At the West End of Boston is a quarter of some fifty streets, more
or less, commonly known as Beacon Hill.

It is a rich and respectable quarter, sacred to the abodes of Our
First Citizens. The very houses have become sentient of its prevailing
character of riches and respectability; and, when the twilight
deepens on the place, or at high noon, if your vision is gifted, you
may see them as long rows of Our First Giants, with very corpulent
or very broad fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in
square-toed curbstone, with an air about them as if they had thrust
their hard hands into their wealthy pockets forever, with a character
of arctic reserve, and portly dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed,
self-satisfied, opulent, stony, repellent aspect to each, which
says plainly, "I belong to a rich family, of the very highest
respectability."

History, having much to say of Beacon Hill generally, has, on the
present occasion, something to say particularly of a certain street
which bends over the eminence, sloping steeply down to its base.
It is an old street,--quaint, quiet, and somewhat picturesque. It
was young once, though,--having been born before the Revolution,
and was then given to the city by its father, Mr. Middlecott, who
died without heirs, and did this much for posterity. Posterity
has not been grateful to Mr. Middlecott. The street bore his name
till he was dust, and then got the more aristocratic epithet of
Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by effacing what would have been
his noblest epitaph. We may expect, after this, to see Faneuil
Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith Hall! Republics are
proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to public remembrance
has the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr.
Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the grave to reveal
wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost from the
grave to prove the proverb about repu