d honest facts in regard to my
adventure in a so called haunted house. Don't make it public until you
are convinced that the old gardener has shuffled off this mortal coil."

So much for Kirby's story of the haunted house. No doubt, the old
gardener has before this become in reality a disembodied spirit, but
that his grand-daughter became legally possessed of the estate is not at
all probable. Real estate does not change hands so easily in England. So
powerful, however is the superstitious belief in haunted houses, that it
is doubtful whether that property will for many years sustain half so
great a cash value in the market as it would have done had it not been
considered a "haunted house."

It is to be hoped that, as schools multiply and education increases, the
follies and superstitions which underlie a belief in ghosts and
hobgoblins will pass away.

CHAPTER XXXV.

HAUNTED HOUSES.--GHOSTS.--GHOULS.--PHANTOMS.--VAMPIRES.--CONJURORS.--
DIVINING.--GOBLINS.--FORTUNE-TELLING.--MAGIC.--WITCHES.--SORCERY.--
OBI.--DREAMS.--SIGNS.--SPIRITUAL MEDIUMS.--FALSE PROPHETS.--
DEMONOLOGY.--DEVILTRY GENERALLY.

Whether superstition is the father of humbug, or humbug the mother of
superstition (as well as its nurse,) I do not pretend to say; for the
biggest fools and the greatest philosophers can be numbered among the
believers in and victims of the worst humbugs that ever prevailed on the
earth.

As we grow up from childhood and begin to think we are free from all
superstitions, absurdities, follies, a belief in dreams, signs, omens,
and other similar stuff, we afterward learn that experience does not
cure the complaint. Doubtless much depends upon our "bringing up." If
children are permitted to feast their ears night after night (as I was)
with stories of ghosts, hobgoblins, ghouls, witches, apparitions,
bugaboos, it is more difficult in after-life for them to rid their minds
of impressions thus made.

But whatever may have been our early education, I am convinced that
there is an inherent love of the marvelous in every breast, and that
everybody is more or less superstitious; and every superstition I
denominate a humbug, for it lays the human mind open to any amount of
belief, in any amount of deception that may be practised.

One object of these chapters consists in showing how open everybody is
to deception, that nearly everybody "hankers" after it, that solid and
solemn realities are frequently set aside for sil