.

The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their
shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins, and
tricks of the devil, in all kinds of shapes, from the first settlement
of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might
have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's
effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching
his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were reduced to cinders. In
place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and
shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved
horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burned
to the ground.

Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all
gripping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not
to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd's
money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and
old Indian fort are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on
horseback, in morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the
troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself
into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so prevalent
throughout New England, of "The devil and Tom Walker."

DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT

_Nathaniel Hawthorne_ (1807-1864)

That very singular man, old Doctor Heidegger, once invited four
venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three
white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr.
Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman whose name was the Widow
Wycherley. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been
unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they
were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his
age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic
speculation, and was no little better than a mendicant. Colonel
Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in
the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of
pains, such as the gout and divers other torments of soul and body.
Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at
least had been so, till time had buried him from the knowledge of the
present generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for
the Widow Wycherley, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in
her day