e of an ousted tenant, etc., etc.
Everybody offered his own theory, and, as is usual, in such cases,
nobody was exactly right.

Meanwhile, the "Sunday Mercury" continued its publications of the
further progress of the "mystery," from week to week, for a space of
nearly two months, until the whole country seemed to have gone
ghost-mad. Apparitions and goblins dire were seen in Washington,
Rochester, Albany, Montreal, and other cities.

The spiritualists took it up and began to discuss "the Carter Ghost"
with the utmost zeal. One startling individual--a physician and a
philosopher--emerged from his professional shell into full-fledged
glory, as the greatest canard of all, and published revelations of his
own intermediate intercourse with the terrific "Carter." In every nook
and corner of the land, tremendous posters, in white and yellow, broke
out upon the walls and windows of news-depots, with capitals a foot
long, and exclamation-points like drumsticks, announcing fresh
installments of the "Ghost" story, and it was a regular fight between
go-ahead vendors who should get the next batch of horrors in advance of
his rivals.

Nor was the effect abroad the least feature of this stupendous "sell."
The English, French, and German press translated some of the articles in
epitome, and wrote grave commentaries thereon. The stage soon caught the
blaze; and Professor Pepper, at the Royal Polytechnic Institute, in
London, invented a most ingenious device for producing ghosts which
should walk about upon the stage in such a perfectly-astounding manner
as to throw poor Hamlet's father and the evil genius of Brutus quite
into the "shade." "Pepper's Ghost" soon crossed the Atlantic, and all
our theatres were speedily alive with nocturnal apparitions. The only
real ghosts, however--four in number--came out at the Museum, in an
appropriate drama, which had an immense run--"all for twenty-five
cents," or only six and a quarter cents per ghost!

But I must not forget to say that, really, the details given in the
"Sunday Mercury" were well calculated to lead captive a large class of
minds prone to luxuriate in the marvelous when well mixed with plausible
reasoning. The most circumstantial accounts were given of sundry "gifted
young ladies," "grave and learned professors," "reliable
gentlemen"--where are those not found?--"lonely watchers," and others,
who had sought interviews with the "ghost," to their own great
enlightenment, indeed,