My grandmother’s mother was a matron, I was told, of high respectability and corresponding piety; well-informed and strong-minded.  She was distinguished, however; for while other matrons of her age and quality had seen many a ghost, she had seen but one.  She was in this particular on a level with the learned lecturer, afterwards judge, the commentator Blackstone.  But she was heretical, and her belief bordered on Unitarianism.  And by the way, this subject of ghosts has been among the torments of my life.  Even now, when sixty or seventy years have passed over my head since my boyhood received the impression which my grandmother gave it, though my judgment is wholly free, my imagination is not wholly so.  My infirmity was not unknown to the servants.  It was a permanent source of amusement to ply me with horrible phantoms in all imaginable shapes.  Under the pagan dispensation, every object a man could set his eyes on had been the seat of some pleasant adventure.  At Barking, in the almost solitude of which so large a portion of my life was passed, every spot that could be made by any means to answer the purpose was the abode of some spectre or group of spectres.  So dexterous was the invention of those who worked upon my apprehensions, that they managed to transform a real into a fictitious being.  His name was Palethorp; and Palethorp, in my vocabulary, was synonymous with hobgoblin.  The origin of these horrors was this:—­

My father’s house was a short half-mile distant from the principal part of the town, from that part where was situated the mansion of the lord of the manor, Sir Crisp Gascoigne.  One morning the coachman and the footman took a conjunct walk to a public-house kept by a man of the name Palethorp; they took me with them:  it was before I was breeched.  They called for a pot of beer; took each of them a sip, and handed the pot to me.  On their requisition, I took another; and when about to depart, the amount was called for.  The two servants paid their quota, and I was called on for mine. Nemo dat quod non habet—­this maxim, to my no small vexation, I was compelled to exemplify.  Mr. Palethorp, the landlord, had a visage harsh and ill-favored, and he insisted on my discharging my debt.  At this very early age, without having put in for my share of the gifts of fortune, I found myself in the state of an insolvent debtor.  The demand harassed me so mercilessly that I could hold out no longer:  the door being open, I took to my heels; and as the way was too plain to be missed, I ran home as fast as they could carry me.  The scene of the terrors of Mr. Palethorp’s name and visitation, in pursuit of me, was the country-house at Barking; but neither was the town-house free from them; for in those terrors, the servants possessed an instrument by which it was in their power at any time to get rid of my presence.  Level with the kitchen—­level with the landing-place in which the staircase took its commencement—­were