Nightmare Abbey, a venerable family mansion in a highly picturesque state of semi-dilapidation, in the county of, Lincoln, had the honour to be the seat of Christopher Glowry, Esquire, a gentleman much troubled with those phantoms of indigestion commonly called “blue devils.”

Disappointed both in love and friendship, he had come to the conclusion that there was but one good thing in the world, videlicet, a good dinner; and remained a widower, with one only son and heir, Scythrop.

This son had been sent to a public-school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him, and he finished his education to the high satisfaction of the master and fellows of his college.  He passed his vacations sometimes at Nightmare Abbey, and sometimes in London, at the house of his uncle, Mr. Hilary, a very cheerful and elastic gentleman.  The company that frequented his house was the gayest of the gay.  Scythrop danced with the ladies and drank with the gentlemen, and was pronounced by both a very accomplished, charming fellow.

Here he first saw the beautiful Miss Emily Girouette, and fell in love; he was favourably received, but the respective fathers quarrelled about the terms of the bargain, and the two lovers were torn asunder, weeping and vowing eternal constancy; and in three weeks the lady was led a smiling bride to the altar, leaving Scythrop half distracted.  His father, to comfort him, read him a commentary on Ecclesiastes, of his own composition; it was thrown away upon Scythrop, who retired to his tower as dismal and disconsolate as before.

The tower which Scythrop inhabited stood at the south-eastern angle of the abbey; the south-western was ruinous and full of owls; the north-eastern contained the apartments of Mr. Glowry; the north-eastern tower was appropriated to the servants, whom Mr. Glowry always chose by one of two criterions—­a long face or a dismal name.  The main building was divided into room of state, spacious apartments for feasting, and numerous bedrooms for visitors, who, however, were few.

Occasional visits were paid by Mr. and Mrs. Hilary, but another visitor, much more to Mr. dowry’s taste, was Mr. Flosky, a very lachrymose and morbid gentleman, of some note in the literary world, with a very fine sense of the grim and the tearful.

But the dearest friend of Mr. Glowry, and his most welcome guest, was Mr. Toobad, the Manichean Millenarian.  The twelfth verse of the twelfth chapter of Revelations was always in his mouth:  “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the devil is come among you, having great wrath, because he knoweth he hath but a short time.”  He maintained that this precise time was the point of the plenitude of the power of the Evil Principle; he used to add that by and by he would be cast down, and a happy order of things succeed, but never omitted to add “Not in our time,” which last words were always echoed by Mr. Glowry, in doleful response.