ng threw the dishes about (like the Davenport "spirits;")
put logs for the pillows; flung brickbats up and down, without regard to
heads; smashed the windows; threw pebbles in at the frightened
commissioners; stuck a lot of pewter platters into their beds; ran away
with their breeches; threw dirty water over them in bed; banged them
over the head--until, after several weeks, the poor fellows gave it up,
and ran away back to London. Many years afterward, it came out that all
this was done by their clerk, who was secretly a royalist, though they
thought him a furious Puritan, and who knew all the numerous secret
passages and contrivances in the old palace. Most people have read Sir
Walter Scott's capital novel of "Woodstock," founded on this very story.

The well known "Demon of Tedworth," that drummed, and scratched, and
pounded, and threw things about, in 1661, in Mr. Mompesson's house
turned out to be a gipsy drummer and confederates.

The still more famous "Ghost in Cock Lane," in London in 1762,
consisted of a Mrs. Parsons and her daughter, a little girl, trained by
Mr. Parsons to knock and scratch very much after the fashion of the
alphabet talking of the "spirits" of to-day. Parsons got up the whole
affair, to revenge himself on a Mr. Kent. The ghost pretended to be that
of a deceased sister-in-law of Kent, and to have been poisoned by him.
But Parsons and his assistants were found out, and had to smart for
their fun, being heavily fined, imprisoned, etc.

A very able ghost indeed, a Methodist ghost--the spectral property,
consequently, of my good friends the Methodists--used to rattle, and
clatter, and bang, and communicate, in the house of the Rev. Mr. Wesley,
the father of John Wesley, at Epworth, in England. This ghost was very
troublesome, and utterly useless. In fact, none of the ghosts that haunt
houses are of the least possible use. They plague people, but do no
good. They act like the spirits of departed monkeys.

I must add two or three short anecdotes about ghosts, got up in the
devil-manner. They are not new, but illustrate very handsomely the state
of mind in which a ghost should be met. One is, that somebody undertook
to scare Cuvier, the great naturalist, with a ghost having an ox's head.
Cuvier woke, and found the fearful thing glaring and grinning at his
bedside.

"What do you want?"

"To devour you!" growled the ghost.

"Devour me?" quoth the great Frenchman--"Hoofs, horns, _graminivorous_!