e supposed to harbor a
ghost or a ghoul.

Fortunately for the rising generation, these tales have gone out of
fashion, and though some attempts to revive the taste have been
made--as in the "Night Side of Nature"--such efforts have proved
deplorable failures. The young people of to-day make light of ghosts.
The spectres in the incantation scene of "Der Freyschutz" are received
with roars of laughter, and even the statue in Don Giovanni seems
"jolly," notwithstanding the illusive music of Mozart. We were about
to remark that the age had outgrown superstition, but we remembered
the Rochester knockings, and concluded to be modestly silent.

One evening, many years since--it was a blustering December
evening--the wind howling as it dashed the old buttonwood limbs in its
fury against the parlor windows of the country house where a few of us
were assembled to pass the winter holidays, we gathered before a
roaring fire of walnut and oak, which made every thing within doors as
cheery and comfortable as all without was desolate and dreary. The
window shutters were left unfastened, that the bright lamplight and
ruddy firelight might stream afar upon the wintry waste, and perhaps
guide some benighted wayfarer to a hospitable shelter.

We shall not attempt to describe the group, as any such portrait
painting would not be germane to the matter more immediately in hand.
Suffice it to say, that one of the youngsters begged aunt Deborah, the
matron of the mansion, to tell us a ghost story,--"a real ghost story,
aunt Deborah,"--for in those days we were terribly afraid of
counterfeits, and hated to hear a narrative where the ghost turned out
in the end to be no ghost after all, but a mere compound of flesh and
blood like ourselves.

Aunt Deborah smiled at our earnestness, and tantalized our impatience
by some of those little arts with which the practised story-teller
enhances the value and interest of her narrative. She tapped her
silver snuffbox, opened it deliberately, took a very delicate pinch of
the Lundy Foot, shut the box, replaced it in her pocket, folded her
hands before her, looked round a minute on the expectant group, and
then began.

I shall despair of imparting to this cold pen-and-ink record of her
story the inimitable conversational grace with which she embellished
it. It made an indelible impression on my memory, and if I have never
before repeated it, it was from a lurking fear that--though the old
lady assured