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.
As he subsided the master of ceremonies said:
“Is Mr. Peleg Eddy here? I am sorry to say that I have never had the
pleasure of meeting Mr. Eddy, so I cannot tell which one of our invited
guests he is.”
He looked around three or four times, and again asked for the gentleman
from out of town. Finally a gloomy-looking little man stood up with a
very bad grace. He could not have been more than five feet tall in life
and was now considerably less. He repeated:
“Peleg Eddy and his wife,
They sat out in early life.
They turned about each other's hearts,
But God doth call and they must part.
'Tis hard to part and leave behind
A tender wife and child so kind.
With anxious care she watched his bed,
And kept cold towels on his head,
But all in vain, for God doth send
And call away her bosom friend.
To his dear mother standing by,
Saying, 'Dear mother, prepare to die,
The heavens in glory is full in view,'
He soon did bid this world a long adieu.
A few hours after his senses fled,
And now he sleeps among the dead;
Sleep on, sleep on, and take thy rest,
God called thee home we all thought best.”
As this unfortunate man, whose family had laid this heavy load on him,
sat down there were murmurs of condolence all around, and the newspaper
man asked if he would permit him to ask where he was buried, whereupon
he glared in the most ferocious manner at the interloper, while his bony
fists clenched ominously:
“You may ask if you like, but I shall not answer. Do you think it is not
enough to have to lie under that stuff without letting all the
rubberneckers in the country know where it is that they may come and
make fun of it?”
The young man disclaimed any such intention, and said that he regretted
having asked, and apologized so abjectly that at last the poor ghost
unbent a little and volunteered the information that the widow who had
been such a ministering angel with her cold towels had wedded again in
just one year, “and his name is Whipple, and I am just laying for him.
If ever I do find him I am going to pulverize him. He wrote that epitaph
and my wife thought it such a wonderful poetic effusion that she lost
her heart, and common sense. I wait year after year in hopes of meeting
him. Have you any idea how many centuries it will take to rub out all
that?”
The newspaper man told the unhappy ghost that there was no punishment
too great for a man guilty of such a pack of doggerel, and he meant it,
and made another mental note that he should leave strict orders that no
epitaph should be put over his resting place when he should be no more.
The master of ceremonies now stood up and announced:
“I have the honor to announce that Sergeant Benjamin Davis, who was in
the Civil War in the Seventh Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers is
here. He participated in sixteen battles and served four years. He will
now speak.”
The ghost of the young man stood up, and he wore the shreds of his
uniform, and so was the only ghost who did not wear what was left of his
shroud. He said modestly:
“Ben. F. Davis, a sergeant in the Seventh Connecticut Volunteers.
Participated in sixteen battles with conspicuous bravery and contracted
chronic—”
Here he was suddenly interrupted by the leader of society, who said with
great concern:
“Sir, do not forget that there are ladies present.”
“Who is this galoot? By what right do you assume, sir, that I was about
to insult these ladies? It is a good job for you that there are ladies
present. I would use you for a curry comb otherwise. Now, then, just you
close the doors of your face, as Job says. I contracted chronic
rheumatism and died of rheumatism of the heart. Have you any objections
to make to that?”
“No, not at all, only it was probably heart failure, instead of what you
say. It is not fashionable to have rheumatism of the heart now, for it
is dignified as heart failure. We have heart failure, and appendicitis,
and laryngitis—”
“Folks die of them just the same, don't they?”
“Yes: but it sounds so much more refined.”
The soldier boy looked at the man whose refinements were so much greater
than the occasion required from head to foot, and then said defiantly:
“I don’t see that you make any better looking ghost than the rest of us,
and for two cents I would smash that ugly skull of yours, or at least
reduce that very evident bump of self-esteem.”
At this juncture the master of ceremonies was struggling with an
overwhelming desire to laugh, for no one liked this man who always felt
it a bounden duty to find fault with everyone and everything. But, at
last he managed to rap for order and when the other ghosts had ceased
laughing at the leader's discomfiture, he said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, by some mischance I failed to see the name of a
lady from Derby, one whom we should all delight to honor, and I now ask
Mrs. Hannah Clark to rise and favor us with her epitaph. Mrs. Clark,
ladies and gentlemen.”
As he said this the old lady arose to her feet, and holding to the edge
of the table repeated in a weak and quavering voice:
“Hannah Clark, died September, 1801, aged 91. Her lineal descendants at
the time of her death were 333, viz.: 10 children, 62 grandchildren, 242
great-grandchildren and 19 great-great-grandchildren. During her long
life her company was the delight of her numerous friends and
acquaintances. Having performed the duties of life and being impressed
with the reality and importance of religion she died as she had lived,
satisfied and happy.”
As she said these words there came a strange and subtle change over her
seamed and wrinkled skull, and she seemed to be putting on some filmy
veil that softened all the outlines of the bones, and she said in a
voice that grew sweeter and stronger with every word:
“My dear friends, it is borne in upon me that my time has come to leave
all that belongs to this stage of existence and go where my Master calls
me. It has come very unexpectedly, for I had not hoped for my passport
for many long years yet. Adieu, adieu!”
Even as she spoke she was undergoing a change that was so wonderful that
the whole assemblage, including the reporter, watched her intently.
First, the bones of her skeleton grew misty and indefinite, and in their
places there gathered a soft, filmy, nebulous mass of floating
particles, and little by little they united into a misty, floating body,
and this in turn took the form of the dead woman’s face before decay had
touched it. The features were defined as those of a lovable old lady,
and flesh appeared to clothe the fleshless bones.
For a moment she looked at the people, and then with a smile of
ineffable sweetness she vanished into nothingness, the tender smile
seeming to remain even after all the rest had vanished. For several
minutes everything was still, with that strange stillness which
sometimes falls upon a whole community, without apparent reason, when
every sense is alert, though nothing tangible is seen. The young
newspaper man felt a lump rise in his throat, and two tears jumped
suddenly from his eyes and rolled unheeded down his cheeks as he thought
of the years of toil this woman had borne without thought or hope of
recompense, and now she was so signally blest. The sight laid one more
stone in the foundation of the resolves made this night as to his
future. That the occasion was a solemn one, the silence and evident awe
of the other ghosts was proof. Besides, the fading face was so
glorified, and wore such a beatific expression that no one who saw it
could doubt the fact that her season of penance was ended.
With a smile of ineffable sweetness she vanished.
Filled with these thoughts, and marveling at it all, the young man
scarcely knew that all the tables had disappeared, when he found himself
sitting alone on a chair in the middle of the immense room.
He hastily rose to his feet and started off to find the Sociable Ghost,
but he was nowhere to be seen, and so he entered into a conversation
with a man who had been sitting silently at the table, and asked him if
he could tell him how such a transformation had taken place and what had
become of the bones, or had he been the victim of an optical illusion?
The man replied:
“No one knows the hour of his release until it comes, and when it does,
all the bones and all other material parts fall into impalpable dust and
go to help build more worlds. From now on the spirit is free from all
hindrance, and it is to be supposed that it passes to a better sphere.
That is all we know about it. We all hope for the hour of release, but
only the Master can tell when we have earned the right.”
Probably the man would have said more on the subject, had not the ghost
of Peleg Eddy come along and stopped, saying angrily:
“Aha! I have found you at last! You are the idiot that wrote that
epitaph to weigh me down forever! And, you married my widow—”
“You ought to pardon me the first on account of the last.”
“You are a liar, sir—”
Peleg Eddy interrupted the conversation right here, for the other ghost
doubled up his fist and let it go, and it went in the direction of
Peleg’s head, and that not being on very strong, owing to the fact that
the bones were very small, the head rolled to the floor and on for some
little distance, while there was a general shout of laughter at the
mishap. Peleg ran after it and putting it under his arm for safety, said
in trembling tones:
“You had better take care, sir, and not arouse the sleeping lion. Don't
turn the tiger loose in me. I am afraid to say of what I am capable when
I am aroused fully.”
“Don't rouse the sleeping lion”
“Oh, don't be afraid to tell us, for nobody else is afraid, but I advise
you to go and take a nap, and if in that sweet slumber you even dream
that you can thrash me I shall know it, and I will give you one that will
last you a thousand years. I owe you one for dying anyhow, or I should
never have married your widow. She led me a dog's life, and I just feel
like taking it out of you.”
By this time all the ghosts were tired of a quarrel promising so little
real fight, and they sauntered off in different directions while the
young man, left alone, walked along toward the Egyptian.
As he walked along he heard two women talking and as the princess
happened to be the subject of their conversation he sauntered more
slowly so that he could hear what they were saying. The smaller one of
the two said:
“I don't see where her wonderful preservation comes in, for she is
nothing but a mummy anyhow. Anybody could be as stiff as she is if she
had been soaked in coal tar a year or so. And they dry them so that they
are nothing but a piece of tinder, and I am surprised that Mr.
Huntington should think her remarkable. I am sure she cannot show a curl
of real hair as soft and silky as it was when she was alive, like
someone that I know of.”
This caused the young man to notice the speaker more particularly, and
he saw that while she was small, there was still something about her
that made him think she had been a beauty in her lifetime, for the shape
and the outlines of her head and skeleton were certainly different from
those of most of the others. There was something of elegance in her
movements and more grace than one could mentally connect with a
skeleton. She held her head very much to one side and reminded him of
the girls he had read about in the old romances, “bending over her
tambour frame, with her eyes cast down modestly while her lovely eyes
were suffused with tears of sensibility.”
On one side of the head which was turned to the newspaper man there was
a long curl of silky brown hair. This she twisted constantly with her
bony fingers and smoothed with apparent affection, a sentiment which the