Produced by Robert Ciconnetti, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
"To doubt and to be astonished is to recognize our ignorance. Hence itis that the lover of wisdom is in a certain sort a lover of mythi[Greek: phylomythos pôs], for the subject of mythi is the astonishingand marvellous."—SIR W. HAMILTON (after Aristotle), Lectures onMetaphysics, vol. i. p. 78.
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A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said tome one day, as if between jest and earnest, "Fancy! since we last metI have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London."
"Really haunted,—and by what?—ghosts?"
"Well, I can't answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks agomy wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quietstreet, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, 'Apartments,Furnished.' The situation suited us; we entered the house, liked therooms, engaged them by the week,—and left them the third day. Nopower on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and Idon't wonder at it."
"What did you see?"
"Excuse me; I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitiousdreamer,—nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on myaffirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidenceof your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what wesaw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupesof our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) thatdrove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of uswhenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in whichwe neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of allwas, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly womanthough she be,—and allowed, after the third night, that it wasimpossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourthmorning I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended on us,and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and we would notstay out our week." She said dryly, "I know why; you have stayedlonger than any other lodger. Few ever stayed a second night; nonebefore you a third. But I take it they have been very kind to you."
"'They,—who?' I asked, affecting to smile.
"'Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I don't mind them.I remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as aservant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don'tcare,—I'm old, and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be withthem, and in this house still.' The woman spoke with so dreary acalmness that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversingwith her further. I paid for my week, and too happy were my wife and Ito get off so cheaply."
"You excite my curiosity," said I; "nothing I should like better thanto sleep in a haunted house. Pray give me the address of the one whichyou left so ignominiously."
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