Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.

"Yes, sir, that's the place," he added, turning to me.

And as we all approached it, I bethought me that the direction in which, as I stood upon the stile, I had heard the voice on the night preceding, corresponded accurately with that indicated by my guides. The tomb in question was a huge slab of black marble, supported, as was made apparent when the surrounding brambles were removed, upon six pillars, little more than two feet high each. There was ample room for a human body to lie inside this funeral penthouse; and, on stooping to look beneath, I was unspeakably shocked to see that something like a human figure was actually extended there.

It was, indeed, a corpse, and, what is more, corresponded in every trait with the infernal phantom which, on the preceding night, had visited and appalled me.

The body, though miserably emaciated, was that of a large-boned, athletic man, of fully six feet four in height; and it was, therefore, no easy task to withdraw it from the receptacle where it had been deposited, and lay it, as our assistants did, upon the tombstone which had covered it. Strange to say, moreover, the feet of the body, as we found it, had been placed toward the west.

As I looked upon this corpse, and recognized, but too surely, in its proportions and lineaments, every trait of the apparition that had stood at my bed-side, with a countenance animated by the despair and malignity of the damned, my heart fluttered and sank within me, and I recoiled from the effigy of the demon with terror; second only to that which had thrilled me on the night preceding.

Now, reader —honest reader – I appeal to your own appreciation of testimony, and ask you, having these facts in evidence, and upon the deposition of an eye and ear witness, whose veracity, through a long life, has never once been compromised or questioned, have you, or have you not, in the foregoing story, a well-authenticated ghost story?

Before you answer the above question, however, it may be convenient to let you know certain other facts which were clearly established upon the inquest that was very properly held upon the body which in so strange a manner we had discovered.

I purposely avoid details, and without assigning the depositions respectively to the witnesses who made them, shall restrict myself to a naked outline of the evidence as it appeared.

The body I have described was identified as that of Abraham Smith, an unfortunate lunatic, who had, upon the day but one preceding, made his escape from the neighboring parish workhouse, where he had been for many years confined. His hallucination was a strange, but not by any means an unprecedented one. He fancied that he had died, and was condemned; and, as these ideas alternately predominated, sometimes spoke of himself as an "evil spirit," and sometimes importuned his keepers to "bury him;" using habitually certain phrases, which I had no difficulty in recognizing as among those which he had addressed to me. He had been traced to the neighborhood where his body was found, and had been seen and relieved scarcely half a mile from it, about two hours before my visit to the church-yard! There were, further, unmistakable evidences of some person's having climbed up the trellis-work to my window on the previous night, the shutter of which had been left unbarred, and, as the window might have been easily opened with a push, the cold which I experienced, as an accompaniment of the nocturnal visit, was easily accounted for. There was a mark of blood upon the window-stool, and a scrape upon the knee of the body corresponded with it. A multiplicity of other slight circumstances, and the positive assertion of the chamber-maid that the window had been opened, and was but imperfectly closed again, came in support of the conclusion, which was to my mind satisfactorily settled by the concurrent evidence of the medical men, to the effect that the unhappy man could not have been many hours dead when the body was found.

Taken in the mass, the evidence convinced me; and though I might still have clung to the preternatural theory, which, in the opinion of some persons, the facts of the case might still have sustained, I candidly decided with the weight of evidence, "gave up the ghost," and accepted the natural, but still somewhat horrible explanation of the occurrence. For this candor I take credit to myself. I might have stopped short at the discovery of the corpse, but I am no friend to "spurious gospels;" let our faith, whatever it is, be founded in honest fact. For my part, I steadfastly believe in ghosts, and have dozens of stories to support that belief; but this is not among them. Should I ever come, therefore, to tell you one, pray remember that you have to deal with a candid narrator.

DEATH OF CROMWELL

The flowers of autumn, withering fast.
Before the bitter Northern blast;
The earth with hoary frost o'erspread,
And Nature's leafy mantle shed,
Proclaimed abroad through earth and sky
That winter's gloomy reign drew nigh.

And he, whose hand, with mighty stroke,
Oppression's chains had often broke,
Whose patriot heart and fearless voice
Had made oppression's slaves rejoice,
Like autumn's beauty, day by day,
Was passing rapidly away.

Life's spring had brought him hopes and fears,
Its summer many toils and cares;
Autumn had brought him power and fame,
But autumn passed – life's winter came;
And then, like nature, seeking rest,
His head a dying pillow pressed.

A furious storm, with dreadful roar,
Shook Britain's isle from shore to shore,
The raging sea, with thundering sound,
Spread ruin, fear, and death around;
And seem'd to tell throughout the land
Some dire event was near at hand.

Surrounded by the howling blast,
His tide of life was ebbing fast;
But he was calm as evening air,
And raised on high a voice of prayer,
For neither storm nor death's fierce dart
Could shake the faith that nerv'd his heart.

He knew the hand that kept his life
Throughout a long, protracted strife,
Could never fail or know decay,
Though earth itself should pass away;
And as the stormy night rolled on,
His spirit hasted to be gone.

But morning dawn'd at length, and brought
That day's[3 - 3d September, the anniversary of his greatest victories.] return on which he fought
So often – till the evening sun
Set o'er the mighty victories won:
And darkness, like the warrior's shield,
Spread o'er the bloody battle-field.

That day brought victory no more;
His earthly triumphs then were o'er:
The battle of his life had pass'd,
And Death claim'd Victory at last;
For when the evening shades came down
His wearied spirit thence had flown.

    William Ilott.

[From Household Words.]

MY WONDERFUL ADVENTURES IN SKITZLAND

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

THE BEGINNING IS A BORE – I FALL INTO MISFORTUNE

I am fond of gardening. I like to dig. If among the operations of the garden any need for such a work can be at any time discovered or invented, I like to dig a hole. On the third of March, 1848, I began a hole behind the kitchen wall, whereinto it was originally intended to transplant a plum-tree. The exercise was so much to my taste, that a strange humor impelled me to dig on. A fascination held me to the task. I neglected my business. I disappeared from the earth's surface. A boy who worked a basket by means of a rope and pulley, aided me; so aided, I confined my whole attention to spade labor. The centripetal force seemed to have made me its especial victim. I dug on until autumn. In the beginning of November I observed that, upon percussion, the sound given by the floor of my pit was resonant. I did not intermit my labor, urged as I was by a mysterious instinct downward. On applying my ear, I occasionally heard a subdued sort of rattle, which caused me to form a theory that the centre of the earth might be composed of mucus. In November, the ground broke beneath me into a hollow and I fell a considerable distance. I alighted on the box-seat of a four-horse coach, which happened to be running at that time immediately underneath. The coachman took no notice whatever of my sudden arrival by his side. He was so completely muffled up, that I could observe only the skillful way in which he manipulated reins and whip. The horses were yellow. I had seen no more than this, when the guard's horn blew, and presently we pulled up at an inn. A waiter came out, and appeared to collect four bags from the passengers inside the coach. He then came round to me.

"Dine here, sir?"

"Yes, certainly," said I. I like to dine – not the sole point of resemblance between myself and the great Johnson.

"Trouble you for your stomach, sir."

While the waiter was looking up with a polite stare into my puzzled face, my neighbor, the coachman, put one hand within his outer coat, as if to feel for money in his waistcoat-pocket. Directly afterward his fingers come again to light, and pulled forth an enormous sack. Notwithstanding that is was abnormally enlarged, I knew by observation of its form and texture that this was a stomach, with the œsophagus attached. This, then, the waiter caught as it was thrown down to him, and hung it carelessly over his arm, together with the four smaller bags (which I now knew to be also stomachs) collected from the passengers within the coach. I started up, and as I happened to look round, observed a skeleton face upon the shoulders of a gentleman who sat immediately behind my back. My own features were noticed at the same time by the guard, who now came forward, touching his hat.

"Beg your pardon, sir, but you've been and done it."