his grave, and not left him at
peace even there. This is a very solemn and touching story, and
appeals tenderly and sadly to all persons of letters who suffer from
the unasked for manuscripts of the general public.

2. Some ladies and servants in a house in Hyde Park Place, see at
intervals a phantom housemaid: she is also seen by a Mr. Bird.
There is no story about a housemaid, and there are no noises. This
is _not_ an interesting tale.

3. A Hindoo native woman is seen to enter a locked bath-room, where
she is not found on inquiry. A woman had been murdered there some
years before. The percipient, General Sir Arthur Becher, had seen
other uncanny visions. A little boy, wakened out of sleep, said he
saw an ayah. Perhaps he did.

4. A Mr. Harry, in the South of Europe, saw a white female figure
glide through his library into his bedroom. Later, his daughters
beheld a similar phenomenon. Mr. Harry, a gentleman of sturdy
common-sense, 'dared his daughters to talk of any such nonsense as
ghosts, as they might be sure apparitions were only in the
imagination of nervous people'. He himself saw the phantasm seven
or eight times in his bedroom, and twice in the library. On one
occasion it lifted up the mosquito curtains and stared at Mr. Harry.
As in the case of meeting an avalanche, 'a weak-minded man would
pray, sir, would pray; a strong-minded man would swear, sir, would
swear'. Mr. Harry was a strong-minded man, and behaved 'in a
concatenation accordingly,' although Petrus Thyraeus says that there
is no use in swearing at ghosts. The phantasm seemed to be about
thirty-five, her features were described as 'rather handsome,' and
(unromantically) as 'oblong'. A hallucination, we need hardly say,
would not raise the mosquito curtains, this ghost had more heart in
it than most.

5. Various people see 'a column of light vaguely shaped like a
woman,' moving about in a room of a house in Sussex. One servant,
who slept in the room in hopes of a private view, saw 'a ball of
light with a sort of halo round it'. Again, in a very pretty story,
the man who looked after an orphan asylum saw a column of light
above the bed of one of the children. Next morning the little boy
declared that his mother had come to visit him, probably in a dream.

On this matter of lights {146} Mr. Podmore enters into argument with
Mr. Frederick Myers. Mr. Myers, on the whole, believes that the
phenomena of haunted houses are cause