are the Real; the only Ideal is the
Ridiculous and Homely. Let us always remember this. Let us through
life endeavor to personify the virtues, and always begin 'em with a
capital letter. Let us, whenever we can find an opportunity, deliver
our sentiments in the form of round-hand copies. Respect the Aged.
Eschew Vulgarity. Admire Ourselves. Regard the Novelist."

THE HAUNTED MAN.

A CHRISTMAS STORY.

BY CH--R--S D--CK--NS.

PART I.

THE FIRST PHANTOM.

Don't tell me that it wasn't a knocker. I had seen it often enough,
and I ought to know. So ought the three-o'clock beer, in dirty
high-lows, swinging himself over the railing, or executing a demoniacal
jig upon the doorstep; so ought the butcher, although butchers as a
general thing are scornful of such trifles; so ought the postman, to
whom knockers of the most extravagant description were merely human
weaknesses, that were to be pitied and used. And so ought, for the
matter of that, etc., etc., etc.

But then it was SUCH a knocker. A wild, extravagant, and utterly
incomprehensible knocker. A knocker so mysterious and suspicious that
Policeman X 37, first coming upon it, felt inclined to take it
instantly in custody, but compromised with his professional instincts
by sharply and sternly noting it with an eye that admitted of no
nonsense, but confidently expected to detect its secret yet. An ugly
knocker; a knocker with a hard, human face, that was a type of the
harder human face within. A human face that held between its teeth a
brazen rod. So hereafter, in the mysterious future should be held,
etc., etc.

But if the knocker had a fierce human aspect in the glare of day, you
should have seen it at night, when it peered out of the gathering
shadows and suggested an ambushed figure; when the light of the street
lamps fell upon it, and wrought a play of sinister expression in its
hard outlines; when it seemed to wink meaningly at a shrouded figure
who, as the night fell darkly, crept up the steps and passed into the
mysterious house; when the swinging door disclosed a black passage into
which the figure seemed to lose itself and become a part of the
mysterious gloom; when the night grew boisterous and the fierce wind
made furious charges at the knocker, as if to wrench it off and carry
it away in triumph. Such a night as this.

It was a wild and pitiless wind. A wind that had commenced life as a
gentle country zephyr, but wandering th