notions of death and the future state of any who had handled that subject.  She then asked for the work [we marvel the edition and impress had not been mentioned] and lectured on it with great eloquence and affection.  Dr. Kenrick’s Ascetick was also mentioned with approbation by this critical specter [the Doctor’s work was no doubt a tenant of the shelf in some favorite publisher’s shop]; and Mr. Norris’s Poem on Friendship, a work, which I doubt, though honored with a ghost’s approbation, we may now seek for as vainly as Correlli tormented his memory to recover the sonata which the devil played to him in a dream.  Presently after, from former habits we may suppose, the guest desires a cup of tea; but, bethinking herself of her new character, escapes from her own proposal by recollecting that Mr. Bargrave was in the habit of breaking his wife’s china.  It would have been indeed strangely out of character if the spirit had lunched, or breakfasted upon tea and toast.  Such a consummation would have sounded as ridiculous as if the statue of the commander in Don Juan had not only accepted of the invitation of the libertine to supper, but had also committed a beefsteak to his flinty jaws and stomach of adamant.  A little more conversation ensued of a less serious nature, and tending to show that even the passage from life to death leaves the female anxiety about person and dress somewhat alive.  The ghost asked Mrs. Bargrave whether she did not think her very much altered, and Mrs. Bargrave of course complimented her on her good looks.  Mrs. Bargrave also admired the gown which Mrs. Veal wore, and as a mark of her perfectly restored confidence, the spirit led her into the important secret, that it was a scoured silk, and lately made up.  She informed her also of another secret, namely, that one Mr. Breton had allowed her ten pounds a year; and, lastly, she requested that Mrs. Bargrave would write to her brother, and tell him how to distribute her mourning rings, and mentioned there was a purse of gold in her cabinet.  She expressed some wish to see Mrs. Bargrave’s daughter; but when that good lady went to the next door to seek her, she found on her return the guest leaving the house.  She had got without the door, in the street, in the face of the beast market, on a Saturday, which is market day, and stood ready to part.  She said she must be going, as she had to call upon her cousin Watson (this appears to be a gratis dictum on the part of the ghost) and, maintaining the character of mortality to the last, she quietly turned the corner, and walked out of sight.

Then came the news of Mrs. Veal’s having died the day before at noon.  Says Mrs. Bargrave, “I am sure she was with me on Saturday almost two hours.”  And in comes Captain Watson, and says Mrs. Veal was certainly dead.  And then come all the pieces of evidence, and especially the striped silk gown.  Then Mrs. Watson cried out, “You have seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and I that that