The sociable ghost Being the adventures of a reporter who was invited by the sociable ghost to a grand banquet, ball, and convention under the ground of old Trinity churchyard. A true tale of the things he saw and did not see while he was not there.
to fall upon the bony neck of “Martha” that an unregenerate man said
with a harsh, rasping laugh:
“Forget it, forget it! This is no time to bring up old scores. If it
were so, there are several fellows here tonight that I could lick with a
clear conscience. I don’t hold enmity, but I will say that they will do
well not to rouse the sleeping lion.”
As this ghost spoke, he turned his face toward two men at a table a
short distance away, and waited to see the effect of his words. As no
one took up the challenge the man sat down again at the table.
The newspaper man looked at this ghost with considerable interest, and
thought that of all the ghosts he was the cleanest. He had noticed this
ghost sitting at a rude table near the door. There was a candle burning
there and an inkstand, and two immense books. The ghost sat balancing a
pen, but was doing no writing. He had noticed him then as his skull and
bones fairly shone, so white and polished they were.
It was not the intention of the young man to ask any impertinent
questions about anything he saw there, but he thought to himself that
when he was alone with the good-natured ghost he would ask him how this
phenomenon had occurred. While he was thinking this, a polished ghost
turned to him and said:
“Young stranger, I notice that you are somewhat interested in me, and
far from feeling hurt at your natural curiosity, I am flattered by it
and if you wish it I will tell you in a few words how it happens that I
am so white after having been so long dead.”
The young man felt his blood all mount to his face as he saw that even
his secret thought could not be hidden, and he reflected that if even
these ghosts knew what he thought, how impossible it would be to hide
action or thought from the Master, as the ghosts called the One.
“Ahem! young sir, that is the right feeling. But to resume. I was
married to a very sensible and worthy woman, with no nonsense about her.
She kept her house well, and everything that she could do for my comfort
and happiness she did. I felt very badly to leave her, but once you are
called you must go, and I went. At that time Long Island City was
scarcely more than a hole in the ground, and the church to which I
belonged found that it would soon become necessary to remove from New
York City, so they purchased a plot of ground quite in the outskirts of
the former named place. I was laid in the old churchyard until they
should be ready to remove us all. We were finally taken over there and
put into the meanest kind of ground, all soaked with tidewater and the
refuse of ages, which had been swept there by the tides until it grew to
what no one with any regard for the truth would call solid ground. It is
unhealthy even for a dead man.
“Forget it, forget it!”
“Well, there was a sudden rush for that place for its commercial value,
and if I remember rightly I laid about where the big sugar refinery now
stands. But it may have been a little further along, for I had the
chills so bad during all this time that it is not to be wondered at if I
am a bit hazy as to the exact location. We were all glad when we were
moved from that place to one further from the shore. This was really a
comfortable graveyard, but somebody wanted this place, too, and we found
that we had congratulated ourselves too soon, and we were informed that
we were to be moved again.
“In those days the best coffins were made of solid mahogany, and the
longer that remains in the ground the more solid it grows. Several years
had passed, perhaps thirty, and when we were moved many of the cheaper
coffins had crumbled to nothing. It was not an easy job to arrange for
these bodies, for this removal was so long after the burial that there
were no friends left to see to it, and the church had to bear the
expenses, and we who are dead know what that means.”
As the polished ghost said this, there was a long drawn sigh from the
whole assemblage that set all the lights flickering. He continued, sadly
and solemnly:
“I will not dwell on the inconvenience of that removal, though I was
left out all night in the rain. Still no one was to blame for that. Some
of those whose coffins were of poor wood got very wet and some of them
have had rheumatism ever since. Ghostly rheumatism, you know.
“At last we were put into another cemetery in Williamsburg, another most
unhealthy place for ghosts. None of us felt at home there. We began to
expect another removal as this place was building up rapidly, and we
used to talk it over and hope that when we were moved again we should be
put so far out on the Island that no one would ever want the land.
“It came upon us after all like a shock when we heard that we were to
move on again, like Jo in Bleak House. Whatever old coffin had held
together before now fell apart. My coffin was of mahogany, but in the
last removal somehow, half of the lid was knocked off, and one from some
other coffin was put in its place. Naturally that did not last as long
as my own cover, and so when the coffins were all laid out for the final
removal I felt how very frail and rotten this one was, and was in great
fear that some incautious movement would cause it to crumble. I do not
know why it is that coffins have that faculty of crumbling away to dust.
I never noticed any other wood that did it. However, all who had any
living relatives were properly removed, but those who had none had to go
the way of friendless ghosts, and there were things said and done that
would have caused trouble had there been anyone capable of objecting.
“My wife came and insisted that my coffin should be opened, but it was
against the rule, for the sexton who had care of the removals had taken
extra care that all should be done so that there would be no difficulty
in identifying the bodies in case of need. My coffin therefore was all
right, save for the lid; but she would not accept it on that account
unless she could be permitted to open it. That they would not do.
“She tried every way to get them to consent, but the Board of Health had
made the law so, and what do you think she did? She sent the men off on
an errand, and took a spade that was lying near and pried the lid off so
that she could see me, and when the men came running back, she said:
'That's him. I would know his head anywhere, it was so long.’ She was so
glad that she had outwitted the authorities that she did not complain
about the lid. But she was tired of moving me around, and so had me
taken home where I had lived and died, and there she kept me all these
years, 'just to have a man about the house' she said. As she was one of
the cleanest women in the world, she could not bear to see the mold of
the Long Island mud on me, and every Saturday I had a bath. She put
clean clothes on me, and always did as long as she lived. We both lie
now at Kenisco. I hope there will be no removal from there, but you must
not blame me if I have lost confidence when it comes to be a question of
routing out the dead to make place for the living, if there is money in
it.”
CHAPTER V.
THE PRINCESS FROM EGYPT
While the polished ghost was relating his varied experiences, the women
were talking, and the young man found that his thoughts wandered as he
noticed a couple of articulated skeletons. He wondered if their
experience would not be worth an effort, and was trying to think up some
plan by which he could get them to talk, but before he could do so a
man, on the other side of the woman who hated cooking, said solemnly:
“Now, maybe your folks had dyspepsia. That excuses much, and some folks
that are not really nagging by nature get so by their sufferings. Now, I
knew a fellow, and he was something awful. Nobody couldn't do nothing to
pacify him after he had had his dinner, and at last it got so that
smoking injured his vitals and his victuals done him no good.”
“Did he pine away and die slow or go off all of a sudden at the end, as
it were?” asked the old lady sympathetically.
“Well, I disremember, for I was in California that year and when I came
back he was gone.”
The young reporter thought this was a good time to try to learn what
death really meant, and so he chose out a ghost whose frontal
development was such as to give the appearance of great intellectuality,
and said modestly:
“Sir, I hope you will not take it amiss if I ask you a few questions—”
“Fire away!” replied the ghost.
This unexpected answer quite took his breath away, but he managed to
keep a sober face and asked:
“I wish very much to know how a man feels when he knows that he is
drawing his last breath, when in short, he knows he is dying. If it is
not asking too much I should like to have as many of you as are willing
to tell me, each his individual experience.” One thoughtful-looking man
waited a moment and as nobody else took up the question he said:
“I think few of us are conscious when the last moment comes. We have all
probably been so ill that there was a complete blank, and where by
accident or any mortal injury it stands to reason that the shock and
hurt would render the person unconscious. You may not know that I was a
bishop in my life time. I thought that I had nothing to fear, and so as
I lay ill—I suffered a long time with the gout—the usual result of
eating and drinking—at last it went to the stomach and I died. Before
departing, I called my weeping friends and told them that the Lord had
called me and I was ready to go. I posed as a martyr and angel of grace,
and my deathbed farewell was spoken of as edifying. I really believed I
was almost a saint, and it was for a long time a matter of surprise to
me to discover that I was not wafted to immediate glory. I had yet to
learn that from him to whom much shall be given much shall be required.
And here I am, the least among you all.”
Another ghost took up the subject and said:
“The most of you here will think it queer, but when I was drawing my last
breath I knew it, and my principal feeling was anger that now one of my
neighbors would get my favorite horse. He had long tried to buy it, and
I would not sell, but what could my widow do with that horse when I was
dead? After that there was a few seconds of blank and I felt myself
drawn out of my own body and in another moment I was standing looking at
myself. It certainly was a strange experience, and I am glad it is all
over.
“I have talked with many ghosts and they all agree that death itself is
not so dreadful. It is like going from a light room into a dark one and
no one knows what is there. I find that almost every one has felt the
same fear of the unknown, but it is after all so small a change. Many
have a feeling as if they were falling a great distance to a profound
depth in the darkness, but so far I have never found one who was really
afraid of dying. It was more like the thought of the plunge into an icy
bath. Sickness and physical suffering have a tendency to deaden the
senses. And death itself is not so much of a change as we are prone to
regard it. The way I now look at it is that it is simply one of the
systematic changes made from time to time, from one sphere of existence
to another, according to the great eternal plan toward a better kind of
man. I used to wonder if this creature here who ravages and eats
everybody else, and who is altogether unworthy and vicious and selfish
was the best there could be, but now that I have an inkling into the
future existence, I believe that we are but atoms in one great plan, and
as worlds have been formed in their perfection, so will man stand out at
last as the finished being he is intended to be, in the right time as
grain is ripened.”
The bishop bowed his head in assent to this, and that set the reporter