scoting, no moulded masks peering down from the simply severe
cornices, no marble vases on the landings. There was an eminent
dreariness and want of life--so rare in an American establishment--all
over the abode. It was Hood's haunted house put in order and newly
painted. The servants, too, were shadowy, and chary of their visits.
Bells rang three times before the gloomy chambermaid could be induced to
present herself; and the negro waiter, a ghoul-like looking creature
from Congo, obeyed the summons only when one's patience was exhausted or
one's want satisfied in some other way. When he did come, one felt sorry
that he had not stayed away altogether, so sullen and savage did he
appear. He moved along the echoless floors with a slow, noiseless
shamble, until his dusky figure, advancing from the gloom, seemed like
some reluctant afreet, compelled by the superior power of his master to
disclose himself. When the doors of all the chambers were closed, and no
light illuminated the long corridor save the red, unwholesome glare of a
small oil lamp on a table at the end, where late lodgers lit their
candles, one could not by any possibility conjure up a sadder or more
desolate prospect.

Yet the house suited me. Of meditative and sedentary habits, I enjoyed
the extreme quiet. There were but few lodgers, from which I infer that
the landlord did not drive a very thriving trade; and these, probably
oppressed by the sombre spirit of the place, were quiet and ghost-like
in their movements. The proprietor I scarcely ever saw. My bills were
deposited by unseen hands every month on my table, while I was out
walking or riding, and my pecuniary response was intrusted to the
attendant afreet. On the whole, when the bustling, wide-awake spirit of
New York is taken into consideration, the sombre, half-vivified
character of the house in which I lived was an anomaly that no one
appreciated better than I who lived there.

I felt my way down the wide, dark staircase in my pursuit of zephyrs.
The garden, as I entered it, did feel somewhat cooler than my own room,
and I puffed my cigar along the dim, cypress-shrouded walks with a
sensation of comparative relief. It was very dark. The tall-growing
flowers that bordered the path were so wrapped in gloom as to present
the aspect of solid pyramidal masses, all the details of leaves and
blossoms being buried in an embracing darkness, while the trees had lost
all form, and seemed like masses of over