University of Virginia Library

STORY TELLING.

A favourite evening pastime at the Hall, and
one which the worthy Squire is fond of promoting,
is story telling—“a good, old fashioned,
fireside amusement,” as he terms it. Indeed, I
believe he promotes it chiefly because it was
one of the choice recreations in those days of
yore, when ladies and gentlemen were not
much in the habit of reading. Be this as it
may, he will often, at supper table, when conversation
flags, call upon some one or other
of the company for a story, as it was formerly
the custom to call for a song; and it is edifying
to see the exemplary patience and even satisfaction
with which the good old gentleman will sit
and listen to some hackneyed tale that he has
heard for at least an hundred times.

In this way, one evening the current of
anecdotes and stories ran upon mysterious personages

that have figured at different times, and
filled the world with doubt and conjecture: such
as the Wandering Jew, the Man with the Iron
Mask, who tormented the curiosity of all Europe,
the Invisible Girl, and last, though not
least, the Pig-faced Lady.

At length one of the company was called
upon that had the most unpromising physiognomy
for a story teller that I had ever seen.
He was a thin, pale, weazen-faced man, extremely
nervous, that had sat at one corner
of the table, shrunk up, as it were, into himself,
and almost swallowed up in the cape of his
coat, as a turtle in its shell.

The very demand seemed to throw him into
a nervous agitation; yet he did not refuse.
He emerged his head out of his shell; made a
few odd grimaces and gesticulations, before he
could get his muscles into order, or his voice
under command; and then offered to give some
account of a mysterious personage that he had
recently encountered in the course of his travels,

and one whom he thought fully entitled to be
classed with the Man with the Iron Mask.

I was so much struck with his extraordinary
narrative that I have written it out, to the best
of my recollection, for the amusement of the
reader. I think it has in it all the elements
of that mysterious and romantic narrative so
greedily sought after at the present day.