vent or publish such a story, or any design to forge and tell a lie,
being a woman of so much honesty and virtue, and her whole life a
course, as it were, of piety." Skepticism itself could not resist this
triple court of evidence so artfully combined, the Justice attesting
for the discerning spirit of the sober and understanding gentlewoman his
kinswoman, and his kinswoman becoming bail for the veracity of Mrs.
Bargrave. And here, gentle reader, admire the simplicity of those days.
Had Mrs. Veal's visit to her friend happened in our time, the conductors
of the daily press would have given the word, and seven gentlemen unto
the said press belonging, would, with an obedient start, have made off
for Kingston, for Canterbury, for Dover,--for Kamchatka if
necessary,--to pose the Justice, cross-examine Mrs. Bargrave, confront
the sober and understanding kinswoman, and dig Mrs. Veal up from her
grave, rather than not get to the bottom of the story. But in our time
we doubt and scrutinize; our ancestors wondered and believed.

Before the story is commenced, the understanding gentlewoman (not the
Justice of Peace), who is the reporter, takes some pains to repel the
objections made against the story by some of the friends of Mrs. Veal's
brother, who consider the marvel as an aspersion on their family, and do
what they can to laugh it out of countenance. Indeed, it is allowed,
with admirable impartiality, that Mr. Veal is too much of a gentleman to
suppose Mrs. Bargrave invented the story--scandal itself could scarce
have supposed that--although one notorious liar, who is chastised
towards the conclusion of the story, ventures to throw out such an
insinuation. No reasonable or respectable person, however, could be
found to countenance the suspicion, and Mr. Veal himself opined that
Mrs. Bargrave had been driven crazy by a cruel husband, and dreamed the
whole story of the apparition. Now all this is sufficiently artful. To
have vouched the fact as universally known, and believed by every one,
_nem. con._, would not have been half so satisfactory to a skeptic as to
allow fairly that the narrative had been impugned, and hint at the
character of one of those skeptics, and the motives of another, as
sufficient to account for their want of belief. Now to the fact itself.

Mrs. Bargrave and Mrs. Veal had been friends in youth, and had protested
their attachment should last as long as they lived; but when Mrs. Veal's
brother obtained an