blics.

Bowdoin Street only differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave,
old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if
it thought to itself, "I'm getting old, but I'm highly respectable;
that's a comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as
if it brooded solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its
original name and calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very
conservative street, it was resolved to keep a cautious silence on
the subject, lest the Union should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears
a profound and mysterious look, as if it could tell something if it
had a mind to, but thought it best not. Something of the ghost of
its father--it was the only child he ever had!--walking there all
the night, pausing at the corners to look up at the signs, which
bear a strange name, and wringing his ghostly hands in lamentation
at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told it in a whisper, many years
ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of the oldest inhabitants
of the city; but the highly respectable quarter never heard of
it, and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe it, by
any sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen a
phantom there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the
very old person was. Nobody knew who had seen it, nor when, nor
how. The very rumor was spectral.

All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that
a ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years
back. The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps
were not yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops
were still distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day.
It was light enough, however, for one to read easily, from the
opposite sidewalk, "Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver
plate of a door, not far from the Gothic portal of the Swedenborgian
church. Near this door stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral
eyes floated on vacancy, and whose long, shadowy white hair lifted
like an airy weft in the streaming wind. That was the ghost! It
stood near the door a long time, without any other than a shuddering
motion, as though it felt the searching blast, which swept furiously
from the north up the declivity of the street, rattling the shutters
in its headlong passage. Once or twice, when a passer-by, muffled
warmly from the bitter air, hurried past, the phantom shrank closer
to the wall, till he