chair has its own particular
ghost. They haunt the empty chambers of our lives, they throng around us
like dead leaves whirled in the autumn wind. Some are living, some are
dead. We know not. We clasped their hands once, loved them, quarreled
with them, laughed with them, told them our thoughts and hopes and aims,
as they told us theirs, till it seemed our very hearts had joined in a
grip that would defy the puny power of Death. They are gone now; lost to
us forever. Their eyes will never look into ours again and their voices
we shall never hear. Only their ghosts come to us and talk with us. We
see them, dim and shadowy, through our tears. We stretch our yearning
hands to them, but they are air.

Ghosts! They are with us night and day. They walk beside us in the busy
street under the glare of the sun. They sit by us in the twilight at
home. We see their little faces looking from the windows of the old
school-house. We meet them in the woods and lanes where we shouted and
played as boys. Hark! cannot you hear their low laughter from behind the
blackberry-bushes and their distant whoops along the grassy glades?
Down here, through the quiet fields and by the wood, where the evening
shadows are lurking, winds the path where we used to watch for her at
sunset. Look, she is there now, in the dainty white frock we knew so
well, with the big bonnet dangling from her little hands and the sunny
brown hair all tangled. Five thousand miles away! Dead for all we know!
What of that? She is beside us now, and we can look into her laughing
eyes and hear her voice. She will vanish at the stile by the wood and we
shall be alone; and the shadows will creep out across the fields and the
night wind will sweep past moaning. Ghosts! they are always with us and
always will be while the sad old world keeps echoing to the sob of long
good-bys, while the cruel ships sail away across the great seas, and the
cold green earth lies heavy on the hearts of those we loved.

But, oh, ghosts, the world would be sadder still without you. Come to
us and speak to us, oh you ghosts of our old loves! Ghosts of playmates,
and of sweethearts, and old friends, of all you laughing boys and girls,
oh, come to us and be with us, for the world is very lonely, and new
friends and faces are not like the old, and we cannot love them, nay,
nor laugh with them as we have loved and laughed with you. And when we
walked together, oh, ghosts of our youth, the world was very