Ghosts

IT is difficult to escape from earlysuperstitions. You reason against them, and are persuaded that they are unworthy of a man of common sense; and yet you cannot shake them off. You heard fifty years ago that Friday was an unlucky day. You know better. You recollect that on Friday Luther and William Penn were born, and the Stamp Act was repealed, and the Hudson River discovered, and Jamestown settled, and the first book printed. Yet you have steered clear of Friday. You did not commence business on Friday. You did not get married on Friday. You would not like it if the Governor of the State proclaimed Thanksgiving for Friday. The owners of steamships are intelligent men, but their vessels do not start on Friday.

If early superstitions were implanted in your mind, you do not like to return to the house to get anything when you have once started on a journey. Perhaps you are careful how you count the carriages at a funeral. You prefer to see the new moon over the right shoulder. Though you know there is nothing in the story of ghosts which your nurse or some one about the old place used to tell you, yet you would a little rather not rent a house that has the reputation of being haunted; and when called to go by a country grave-yard after twelve o’clock at night, you start an argument to prove that you are not afraid.

We never met but one ghost in all our life. It was a very dark night, and we were seven years of age. There was a German cooper, who, on the outskirts of the village, had a shop. It was an interesting spot, and we frequented it. There was a congregation of barrels, kegs, casks, and firkins, that excited our boyish admiration. There the old man stood day after day, hammering away at his trade. He was fond of talk, and had his head full of all that was weird, mysterious, and tragic. During the course of his life he had seen almost as many ghosts as firkins; had seen them in Germany, on the ocean, and in America.

One summer afternoon, perhaps having made an unusually lucrative bargain in hooppoles, the tide of his discourse bore everything before it. We hung on his lips entranced. We noticed not that the shadows of the evening were gathering, nor remembered that we were a mile from home. He had wrought up our boyish imagination to the tip - top pitch. He had told us how doors opened when there was no hand on the latch, and the eyes of a face in a picture winked one windy night; and how intangible objects in white would glide across the room, and headless trunks rode past on phantom horses; and how boys on the way home at night were met by a sheeted form, that picked them up and carried them off, so that they never were heard of, their mother going around as disconsolate as the woman in the “Lost Heir,” crying, “Where’s Billy?”

This last story roused us up to our whereabouts, and we felt we must go home. Our hair, that usually stood on end, took the strictly perpendicular. Our flesh crept with horror of the expedition homeward. Our faith in everything solid had been shaken. We believed only in the subtile and in the intangible. What could a boy of seven years old depend upon if one of these headless horsemen might any moment ride him down, or one of these sheeted creatures pick him up?

We started up the road. We were barefoot. We were not impeded by any useless apparel. It took us no time to get under way. We felt that if we must perish, it would be well to get as near the doorsill of home as possible. We vowed that, if we were only spared this once to get home, we would never again allow the night to catch us at the cooper’s. The ground flew under our feet. No headless horseman could have kept up. Not a star was out. It was the blackness of darkness. We had made half the distance, and were in “the hollow” — the most lonely and dangerous part of the way — and felt that in a minute more we might abate our speed and take fuller breath. But, alas! no such good fortune awaited us. Suddenly our feet struck a monster — whether beastly, human, infernal, or supernal, witch, ghost, demon, or headless horseman, we could not immediately tell. We fell prostrate, our hands passing over a hairy creature; and, as our head struck the ground, the monster rose up, throwing our feet into the air. To this day it would have been a mystery, had not a fearful bellow revealed it as a cow, which had lain down to peaceful slumber in the road, not anticipating the terrible collision. She wasted no time, but started up the road. We, having by experiment discovered which end of us was up, joined her in the race. We knew not but that it was the first instalment of disasters. And, therefore, away we went, cow and boy; but the cow beat. She came into town a hundred yards ahead. I have not got over it yet, that I let that cow beat.

That was the first and last ghost we ever met. We made up our minds for all time to come that the obstacles in life do not walk on the wind, but have either two legs or four. The only ghosts that glide across the room are those of the murdered hours of the past. When the door swings open without any hand, we send for the locksmith to put on a better latch. Sheeting has been so high since the war, that apparitions will never wear it again. Friday is an unlucky day only when on it we behave ill. If a salt-cellar upset, it means no misfortune, unless you have not paid for the salt. Spirits of the departed have enough employment in the next world to keep them from cutting up monkey-shines in this. Better look out for cows than for spooks.

Here is a man who starts out in a good enterprise. He makes rapid strides. He will establish a school. He will reform inebriates. He will establish an asylum for the destitute. The enterprise is under splendid headway. But some lazy, stupid man, holding large place in community, defeats the project. With his wealth and influence he opposes the movement. He says the thing cannot be done. He does not want it done. He will trip it up; and so the great hulk of obesity lies down across the way. His stupidity and beastliness succeed. The cow beat I

A church would start out on a grand career of usefulness. They are tired of husks, and chips, and fossils. The wasted hands of distress are stretched up for help. The harvest begins to lodge for lack of a sickle. A pillar of fire with baton of lieht marshals the host. But some church official, priding himself on aristocratic association, and holding prominent pew, says: “Be careful! preserve your dignity. I am opposed to such a democratic religion! Heaven save our patent - leathers!” And, with mind stuffed with conceit and body stuffed with high living, he lies down across the road. The enterprise stumbles and falls over him. He chews the cud of satisfaction. The cow beat!

I know communities where there are scores and hundreds of enterprising men; but some man in the neighborhood holds a large amount of land, and he will not sell. He has balked all progress for thirty years. The shriek of a steam-whistle cannot wake him up. The liveliest sound he wants to hear is a fisherman’s horn coming round with lobsters and clams. His land is wanted for a school; but he has always thrived without learning, and inwardly thinks education a bad thing. At his funeral the spirit of resignation will be amazing to tell of While he lives he will lie down across the path of all advancement. Public enterprises, with light foot, will come bounding on, swift as a boy in the night with ghosts after him; but only to turn ignominious somersault over his miserable carcass. The cow beat!