boy, and introduced

"MR. PEPPER'S GHOST.

"In the heart of a great city, whose corruption and wickedness in
continually growing larger and richer, were evident to every
smaller, and, consequently, more pious, town on the globe, dwelt a
shamefully rich banker, named Pursimmons, who, notwithstanding his
vile and enormous wealth, had refused to give it all to the
virtuous poor. That it was utterly impossible for such a man to
enter the Kingdom of Heaven need not be told; since we all know
that honest poverty, alone, can hope for such entrance; and as
poverty covers at least three-fourths of the human race, and is
invariably honest, according to its own touching account, there is
likely to be enough of it to fill up all the standing room in
Paradise, leaving no space for even the repentant wretch of a
millionaire. Hence, it naturally follows, that old Pursimmons was
miserable, with all his wealth. In fact, a slim, black-dressed
gentleman of much spectacles and severe countenance, who had vainly
solicited him to subscribe for ten thousand extra-gilt copies of
his new work on 'The Relation of Sunday Schools with the Moral
Organism of Normal Creation,' to be sent to the starving heathen of
the Choctaw Nation, was heard to remark, emphatically, that he
would rather be 'a ignorant but religious slave in the desert of
Sahara, my brethren, than that godless man with all his filthy
lucre.' Therefore, old Pursimmons _must_ have been a continual prey
to the most horrible twinges of guilty conscience that any one man,
in the abundant excess of his own spiritual serenity, ever
attributed to another of different views. All the year did this
unhappy but fleshy old man sin against everything that is poor and
pious by accepting all--ay, all!--the profits his business was
iniquitous enough to produce; and even rode in a carriage; though
hundreds of noble-hearted Irishmen in the honest brick and mortar
business had to walk,--ay, walk!--becoming so terribly exhausted
thereby as to be invariably compelled to pause for rest, on their
way home, at some humble liquor establishment. When Christmas Eve
came round, it found this enemy of his race meanly retiring to bed,
instead of scouring the highways and byways in search of reduced
private families who might at that very moment be despairingly
prayi