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 on
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 a 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 ever I had 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 in 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 being 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.