th a fascinated reluctance to tales of supernatural wonders, in most
of which the narrators had themselves been actors, or derived their
information from persons, whose veracity it would be a sin to doubt.
Among them was a legend told by Gladding, of a murdered fisherman,
whose ghost he had seen himself, and which was said still to haunt the
banks of the Severn, and never was seen without bringing ill-luck. It
is the only one with which we will trouble our renders, and we relate
it as a sort of specimen of the others:

"You see," said Tom, "it was the spring o' the year, and the shad
begun to swim up stream, when I joined Sam Olmstead's company, and
took a share in his fishing. Well, things went on pretty well for a
while, it was fisherman's luck, fish one day, and none the next, and
we was, on the whole, tolerable satisfied, seeing there was no use to
be anything else, though towards the end, it's a fact, there wasn't
many schools come along. We had built a sort o' hut of boards by the
side of the river where we kept the nets, and where some on us slept
to look after the property. Well, my turn came to stay at the shanty,
and I recollect the night just as well! It was coolish, not so cool
as this, though something like it, for there was some clouds floating
around, but it was a good deal lighter, 'cause the moon was in her
third quarter. I felt sort o' lonesome there, all alone with the nets
and the fish, and I don't know what I should have done but for some
of the 'O be joyful' I had in a jug. I tried my best to fortify my
stomach, and keep up my sperits agin the damp, but I didn't seem to
succeed. Finally, thinks I to myself, I'll go and take a snuff of
the night air, perhaps it will set me up So I sort o' strolled down
towards the shore, and then I walked up a piece, and then I walked
back agin, and once in a while I'd step into the shanty and take a
pull at old Rye. Well, seeing as how it agreed with me, and I begun to
feel better, I kept making my walks longer and longer till I strolled
to a considerable distance. It was in one of them turns I see the
ghost. I supposed afore that ghosts always appeared in white, but this
one didn't. He was dressed just like any other fisherman, in a dark
grey jacket and trowsers and a tarpaulin. It seemed to me at first he
wanted to git out of the way, but I made tracks for him, for I didn't
then a bit mistrust about its being a sperit, and halloed out, 'Who's
that?' The sperit, a