ith ornamentations,
two or three steps, shut off from the sidewalk by a pair of great gates of
open, ornamental iron-work with gilded tops, rise to the white door. This
also is loaded with a raised work of urns and flowers, birds and fonts,
and Phoebus in his chariot. Inside, from a marble floor, an iron-railed,
winding stair ("said the spider to the fly") leads to the drawing-rooms on
the floor even with the balcony. These are very large. The various doors
that let into them, and the folding door between them, have carved panels.
A deep frieze covered with raised work--white angels with palm branches
and folded wings, stars, and wreaths--runs all around, interrupted only by
high, wide windows that let out between fluted Corinthian pilasters upon
the broad open balcony. The lofty ceilings, too, are beautiful with raised
garlandry.

[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE. From a Photograph.]
Measure one of the windows--eight feet across. Each of its shutters is
four feet wide. Look at those old crystal chandeliers. And already here is
something uncanny--at the bottom of one of these rooms, a little door in
the wall. It is barely a woman's height, yet big hinges jut out from the
jamb, and when you open it and look in you see only a small dark place
without steps or anything to let you down to its floor below, a leap of
several feet. It is hardly noteworthy; only neither you nor----can make
out what it ever was for.

The house is very still. As you stand a moment in the middle of the
drawing-room looking at each other you hear the walls and floors saying
those soft nothings to one another that they so often say when left to
themselves. While you are looking straight at one of the large doors that
lead into the hall its lock gives a whispered click and the door slowly
swings open. No cat, no draft, you and----exchange a silent smile and
rather like the mystery; but do you know? That is an old trick of those
doors, and has made many an emotional girl smile less instead of more;
although I doubt not any carpenter could explain it.

I assume, you see, that you visit the house when it is vacant. It is only
at such times that you are likely to get in. A friend wrote me lately:
"Miss ---- and I tried to get permission to see the interior. Madame said
the landlord had requested her not to allow visitors; that over three
hundred had called last winter, and had been refused for that reason. I
thought of the three thousan