in short, we have all the gossip
of _says I_, and _thinks I_, and _says she_, and _thinks she_, which
disputed matters usually excite in a country town.

When we have thus turned the tale, the seam without, it may be thought
too ridiculous to have attracted notice. But whoever will read it as
told by De Foe himself, will agree that, could the thing have happened
in reality, so it would have been told. The sobering the whole
supernatural visit into the language of the middle or low life, gives it
an air of probability even in its absurdity. The ghost of an exciseman's
housekeeper, and a seamstress, were not to converse like Brutus with his
Evil Genius. And the circumstances of scoured silks, broken tea-china,
and such like, while they are the natural topics of such persons'
conversation, would, one might have thought, be the last which an
inventor would have introduced into a pretended narrative betwixt the
dead and living. In short, the whole is so distinctly circumstantial,
that, were it not for the impossibility, or extreme improbability at
least, of such an occurrence, the evidence could not but support the
story.

The effect was most wonderful. _Drelincourt upon Death_, attested by one
who could speak from experience, took an unequaled run. The copies had
hung on the bookseller's hands as heavy as a pile of lead bullets. They
now traversed the town in every direction, like the same balls
discharged from a field-piece. In short, the object of Mrs. Veal's
apparition was perfectly attained.--[See The Miscellaneous Prose Works
of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., vol. iv. p. 305, ed. 1827.]

CANON ALBERIC'S SCRAP-BOOK

BY MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES

St. Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the
Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to
Bagneres-de-Luchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the Revolution,
and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of tourists. In
the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world place--I can
hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a thousand
inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from
Toulouse to see St. Bertrand's Church, and had left two friends, who
were less keen archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse,
under promise to join him on the following morning. Half an hour at the
church would satisfy _them_, and all three could then pursue their
journey in the direction of Au