University of Virginia Library

PAUL'S GHOST.

It was just in the nigh edge of a summer evening, and
Mrs. Partington, who had worked hard at her knitting
all day, began to feel a little dozy. She felt, as she
described it to her neighbor, Mrs. Battlegash, “a sort of
alloverness;” and those who have felt as she thus described
it, will know the precise sensation;— for ourselves, never
having felt so, we cannot explain it.

It was a sort of half twilight, when the daylight
begins to be thick and muddy, and a time when ghosts
are said to be round fully as plenty as at the classic hour
of midnight. We never could see the propriety of restricting
ghostly operations to this sombre hour, and, as
far as our experience goes, we have seen as many ghosts
at “noon of day” as at the “noon of night.”

She never told us why, or if she were thinking of
ghosts at this time; indeed, all we know about the ghost
was from Mrs. Battlegash, and we shall have to give the
narration as we had it under Mrs. B.'s own hand: —

“Says Mrs. Part'nton, says she, `Mrs. Battle,' she
always calls me Battle, though my name is Battlegash
— my husband's name, and his father's — says she, `Mrs.
Battle, I 've seen an apprehension;' and I thought she
was agoing to have an asterisk, she was so very pale and
haggard like; and says I, `What's the matter?' for I felt
kind of skeered. I had heered a good deal about the
spirituous manifestations, and did n't know but they had
been a manifesting her. Says I, `What's the matter,' agin,

and then says she, as solum as a grave-yard, `I 've seen
Paul!' I felt cold chills a crawlin all over me, but I
mustard courage enough to say, `Do tell!' `Yes,' says
she, `I saw him with my mortal eyes, just as he looked
when he was a tenement of clay, with the very soger
clo'es and impertinences he had on the last day he sarved
his country in the auxillary.'

“I tried to comfort the poor cretur by telling her that
I guessed he did n't keer enough about her to want to
come back, and as his estate had all been settled sacreligiously,
it would be very unreasonable indeed in him to
come back to disturb her.

“`Where did you see him?' says I. `Out into the
yard,' said she. `When did you see him?' says I. `Just
now,' said she. `Are you shore it was he?' said I, determined
to get at the bottom of it. `Yes,' said she,
`if ever an apprehension did come back, that 'ere was
one. P'raps it is there now.' Then says I, `Ruth,' says
I, `le's go and see.'

“She riz right up, and we walked along through the
long entry into her room, and looked out of her back
window, and there, shore enough, was a sight as froze my
blood to calves-foot jelly. There was the soger cap and
coat, as nateral as life, with the tompion atop. My
heart come up into my mouth, so that I could have spit
it out just as easy as not. Mrs. Part'nton, says she,
`What do you think of it? is n't it his apprehension?
But I 'm determined to speak to it.'

“I tried to persuade her not to, but she insisted on it,
and out she went.

“`Paul!' said she, `what upon airth do you want,

that you should come back arter it, so apprehensively?'
The figure was setting on the top of the pump when she
spoke, and it did n't take no notice of her. `Paul!' said
she, a little louder. Then slowly and solemly that 'ere
cap turned round, and instead of Paul, Mr. Editor, if
you 'll believe it, it was Ike, the little scapegrace, that
had frightened us almost out of our wits, if we ever had
any. That boy, I believe, will be the means of somebody's
death. Mrs. Part'nton grew very red in the face,
and razed her hand to inflict corporal punishment onto
the young corporal, but the boy looked up kind of
pleasantly like, and she could n't find the heart to strike
him, though I told her if she spared the rod she would
spile that 'ere child. It is fortnight for him that he is n't
a child of mine, I can tell him.”

Here Mrs. Battlegash's narrative ends. We can fancy
the scene in the yard: the youngster in the corporal's
coat, the red face changing to pleasant equanimity, the
raised hand, indicative of temper, subsiding, as the waves
do when the wind ceases to blow, and peace, like the
evening star above them, pervading and giving grace to
the tableau.