fication of the petty vanities
and petty questionings which beset undecided men,--what wonder that
persons not accustomed to sound analysis of evidence should be beguiled
by these subtilest adaptations to their conditions, and hold dalliance
with the feeble shades that imposture or enthusiasm vended about the
towns? Historical personages--a nerveless mimicry of the conventional
stage-representation of them--stalked the Colonel's parlor. Departed
friends, Indians _a discretion_, local celebrities, Deacon Golly, who in
the year '90 took the ten first shares in the Wrexford Turnpike, the
very Pelatiah Brimble from whom "Brimble's Corner" had taken its name,
the identical Timson forever immortal in "Timson's Common,"--these
defunct worthies were audibly, visibly, or tangibly present, pecking at
great subjects in ghostly feebleness, swimming in Tupperic dilutions of
cheapest wisdom, and finally inducing in their patrons strange
derangements of mind and body.

The circle, which was very select, consisted of three highly susceptible
ladies and Stellato as medium-in-chief. Miss Turligood, a sort of
Oroveso to the Druidical chorus, was a muscular spinster, fierce and
forty, sporting steel spectacles, a frizette of the most scrupulous
honesty, and a towering comb which formed what the landscape-gardeners
call "an object" in the distance. Next this commanding lady, with fat
hands sprawled upon the table, sat Mrs. Colfodder, widow, according to
the flesh, of a respectable Foxden grocer. By later spiritual
communications, however, it appeared that matters stood very
differently; for no sooner had the departed Colfodder looked about him a
little in the world to come than he proceeded to contract marriage with
Queen Elizabeth of England, thereby leaving his mortal relict quite free
to receive the addresses of the late Lord Byron, whose proposals were of
the most honorable as well as amatory character. Miss Branly, by far the
most pleasing of the lady-patronesses, was a fragile, stove-dried
mantua-maker,--and, truly, it seemed something like poetic justice to
recompense her depressed existence with the satisfactions of a material
heaven full of marryings and givings in marriage.

"Will Sir Joseph tip for us again?" inquired Miss Turligood, with her
eyes fixed upon a crack in the mahogany table. "Will he? Will he not?
Will he?"

Sir Joseph vouchsafed no answer.

"Hark! wasn't that a rap?" cried Stellato, in a husky whisper.

Here