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+Project Gutenberg EBook, Other Tales and Sketches, by N. Hawthorne
+From "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches"
+#75 in our series by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
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+Title: Other Tales and Sketches
+      (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches")
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Release Date: Nov, 2005  [EBook #9248]
+[This file was first posted on September 25, 2003]
+[Last updated on February 6, 2007]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, OTHER TALES AND SKETCHES ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                 THE DOLIVER ROMANCE AND OTHER PIECES
+
+                         TALES AND SKETCHES
+
+                       By Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+
+                      OTHER TALES AND SKETCHES
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+     My Visit To Niagara 
+     The Antique Ring 
+     Graves And Goblins
+
+
+
+MY VISIT TO NIAGARA.
+
+Never did a pilgrim approach Niagara with deeper enthusiasm than mine.
+I had lingered away from it, and wandered to other scenes, because my
+treasury of anticipated enjoyments, comprising all the wonders of the
+world, had nothing else so magnificent, and I was loath to exchange the
+pleasures of hope for those of memory so soon.  At length the day came.
+The stage-coach, with a Frenchman and myself on the back seat, had
+already left Lewiston, and in less than an hour would set us down in
+Manchester.  I began to listen for the roar of the cataract, and
+trembled with a sensation like dread, as the moment drew nigh, when its
+voice of ages must roll, for the first time, on my ear.  The French
+gentleman stretched himself from the window, and expressed loud
+admiration, while, by a sudden impulse, I threw myself back and closed
+my eyes.  When the scene shut in, I was glad to think, that for me the
+whole burst of Niagara was yet in futurity.  We rolled on, and entered
+the village of Manchester, bordering on the falls.
+
+I am quite ashamed of myself here.  Not that I ran, like a madman to the
+falls, and plunged into the thickest of the spray,--never stopping to
+breathe, till breathing was impossible: not that I committed this, or
+any other suitable extravagance.  On the contrary, I alighted with
+perfect decency and composure, gave my cloak to the black waiter,
+pointed out my baggage, and inquired, not the nearest way to the
+cataract, but about the dinner-hour.  The interval was spent in
+arranging my dress.  Within the last fifteen minutes, my mind had grown
+strangely benumbed, and my spirits apathetic, with a slight depression,
+not decided enough to be termed sadness.  My enthusiasm was in a
+deathlike slumber.  Without aspiring to immortality, as he did, I could
+have imitated that English traveller, who turned back from the point
+where he first heard the thunder of Niagara, after crossing the ocean to
+behold it.  Many a Western trader, by the by, has performed a similar
+act of heroism with more heroic simplicity, deeming it no such wonderful
+feat to dine at the hotel and resume his route to Buffalo or Lewiston,
+while the cataract was roaring unseen.
+
+Such has often been my apathy, when objects, long sought, and earnestly
+desired, were placed within my reach.  After dinner--at which an
+unwonted and perverse epicurism detained me longer than usual--I lighted
+a cigar and paced the piazza, minutely attentive to the aspect and
+business of a very ordinary village.  Finally, with reluctant step, and
+the feeling of an intruder, I walked towards Goat Island.  At the
+tollhouse, there were further excuses for delaying the inevitable
+moment.  My signature was required in a huge ledger, containing similar
+records innumerable, many of which I read.  The skin of a great
+sturgeon, and other fishes, beasts, and reptiles; a collection of
+minerals, such as lie in heaps near the falls; some Indian moccasins,
+and other trifles, made of deer-skin and embroidered with beads; several
+newspapers from Montreal, New York, and Boston;--all attracted me in
+turn.  Out of a number of twisted sticks, the manufacture of a Tuscarora
+Indian, I selected one of curled maple, curiously convoluted, and
+adorned with the carved images of a snake and a fish.  Using this as my
+pilgrim's staff, I crossed the bridge.  Above and below me were the
+rapids, a river of impetuous snow, with here and there a dark rock amid
+its whiteness, resisting all the physical fury, as any cold spirit did
+the moral influences of the scene.  On reaching Goat Island, which
+separates the two great segments of the falls, I chose the right-hand
+path, and followed it to the edge of the American cascade.  There, while
+the falling sheet was yet invisible, I saw the vapor that never
+vanishes, and the Eternal Rainbow of Niagara.
+
+It was an afternoon of glorious sunshine, without a cloud, save those of
+the cataracts.  I gained an insulated rock, and beheld a broad sheet of
+brilliant and unbroken foam, not shooting in a curved line from the top
+of the precipice, but falling headlong down from height to depth.  A
+narrow stream diverged from the main branch, and hurried over the crag
+by a channel of its own, leaving a little pine-clad island and a streak
+of precipice, between itself and the larger sheet.  Below arose the
+mist, on which was painted a dazzling sun-bow with two concentric
+shadows,--one, almost as perfect as the original brightness; and the
+other, drawn faintly round the broken edge of the cloud.
+
+Still I  had not half seen Niagara.  Following the verge of the island,
+the path led me to the Horseshoe, where the real, broad St. Lawrence,
+rushing along on a level with its banks, pours its whole breadth over a
+concave line of precipice, and thence pursues its course between lofty
+crags towards Ontario.  A sort of bridge, two or three feet wide,
+stretches out along the edge of the descending sheet, and hangs upon the
+rising mist, as if that were the foundation of the frail structure.
+Here I stationed myself in the blast of wind, which the rushing river
+bore along with it.  The bridge was tremulous beneath me, and marked the
+tremor of the solid earth.  I looked along the whitening rapids, and
+endeavored to distinguish a mass of water far above the falls, to follow
+it to their verge, and go down with it, in fancy, to the abyss of clouds
+and storm.  Casting my eyes across the river, and every side, I took in
+the whole scene at a glance, and tried to comprehend it in one vast
+idea.  After an hour thus spent, I left the bridge, and, by a staircase,
+winding almost interminably round a post, descended to the base of the
+precipice.  From that point, my path lay over slippery stones, and among
+great fragments of the cliff, to the edge of the cataract, where the
+wind at once enveloped me in spray, and perhaps dashed the rainbow round
+me.  Were my long desires fulfilled?  And had I seen Niagara?
+
+O that I had never heard of Niagara till I beheld it!  Blessed were the
+wanderers of old, who heard its deep roar, sounding through the woods,
+as the summons to an unknown wonder, and approached its awful brink, in
+all the freshness of native feeling.  Had its own mysterious voice been
+the first to warn me of its existence, then, indeed, I might have knelt
+down and worshipped.  But I had come thither, haunted with a vision of
+foam and fury, and dizzy cliffs, and an ocean tumbling down out of the
+sky,--a scene, in short, which nature had too much good taste and calm
+simplicity to realize.  My mind had struggled to adapt these false
+conceptions to the reality, and finding the effort vain, a wretched
+sense of disappointment weighed me down.  I climbed the precipice, and
+threw myself on the earth, feeling that I was unworthy to look at the
+Great Falls, and careless about beholding them again.
+
+All that night, as there has been and will be, for ages past and to
+come, a rushing sound was heard, as if a great tempest were sweeping
+through the air.  It mingled with my dreams, and made them full of storm
+and whirlwind.  Whenever I awoke, and heard this dread sound in the air,
+and the windows rattling as with a mighty blast, I could not rest again,
+till looking forth, I saw how bright the stars were, and that every leaf
+in the garden was motionless.  Never was a summer night more calm to the
+eye, nor a gale of autumn louder to the ear.  The rushing sound proceeds
+from the rapids, and the rattling of the casements is but an effect of
+the vibration of the whole house, shaken by the jar of the cataract.
+The noise of the rapids draws the attention from the true voice of
+Niagara, which is a dull, muffed thunder, resounding between the cliffs.
+I spent a wakeful hour at midnight, in distinguishing its
+reverberations, and rejoiced to find that my former awe and enthusiasm
+were reviving.
+
+Gradually, and after much contemplation, I came to know, by my own
+feelings, that Niagara is indeed a wonder of the world, and not the less
+wonderful, because time and thought must be employed in comprehending
+it.  Casting aside all preconceived notions, and preparation to be dire-
+struck or delighted, the beholder must stand beside it in the simplicity
+of his heart, suffering the mighty scene to work its own impression.
+Night after night, I dreamed of it, and was gladdened every morning by
+the consciousness of a growing capacity to enjoy it.  Yet I will not
+pretend to the all-absorbing enthusiasm of some more fortunate
+spectators, nor deny that very trifling causes would draw my eyes and
+thoughts from the cataract.
+
+The last day that I was to spend at Niagara, before my departure for the
+Far West, I sat upon the Table Rock.  This celebrated station did not
+now, as of old, project fifty feet beyond the line of the precipice, but
+was shattered by the fall of an immense fragment, which lay distant on
+the shore below.  Still, on the utmost verge of the rock, with my feet
+hanging over it, I felt as if suspended in the open air.  Never before
+had my mind been in such perfect unison with the scene.  There were
+intervals, when I was conscious of nothing but the great river, rolling
+calmly into the abyss, rather descending than precipitating itself, and
+acquiring tenfold majesty from its unhurried motion.  It came like the
+march of Destiny.  It was not taken by surprise, but seemed to have
+anticipated, in all its course through the broad lakes, that it must
+pour their collected waters down this height.  The perfect foam of the
+river, after its descent, and the ever-varying shapes of mist, rising
+up, to become clouds in the sky, would be the very picture of confusion,
+were it merely transient, like the rage of a tempest.  But when the
+beholder has stood awhile, and perceives no lull in the storm, and
+considers that the vapor and the foam are as everlasting as the rocks
+which produce them, all this turmoil assumes a sort of calmness.  It
+soothes, while it awes the mind.
+
+Leaning over the cliff, I saw the guide conducting two adventurers
+behind the falls.  It was pleasant, from that high seat in the sunshine,
+to observe them struggling against the eternal storm of the lower
+regions, with heads bent down, now faltering, now pressing forward, and
+finally swallowed up in their victory.  After their disappearance, a
+blast rushed out with an old hat, which it had swept from one of their
+heads.  The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is
+marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of
+foam.  The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a
+looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or
+hazard, than in stemming a violent northeaster.  In a few moments, forth
+came the children of the mist.  Dripping and breathless, they crept
+along the base of the cliff, ascended to the guide's cottage, and
+received, I presume, a certificate of their achievement, with three
+verses of sublime poetry on the back.
+
+My contemplations were often interrupted by strangers, who came down
+from Forsyth's to take their first view of the falls.  A short, ruddy,
+middle-aged gentleman, fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and
+evinced his approbation by a broad grin.  His spouse, a very robust
+lady, afforded a sweet example of maternal solicitude, being so intent
+on the safety of her little boy that she did not even glance at Niagara.
+As for the child, he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a stick of
+candy.  Another traveller, a native American, and no rare character
+among us, produced a volume of Captain Hall's tour, and labored
+earnestly to adjust Niagara to the captain's description, departing, at
+last, without one new idea or sensation of his own.  The next comer was
+provided, not with a printed book, but with a blank sheet of foolscap,
+from top to bottom of which, by means of an ever-pointed pencil, the
+cataract was made to thunder.  In a little talk, which we had together,
+he awarded his approbation to the general view, but censured the
+position of Goat Island, observing that it should have been thrown
+farther to the right, so as to widen the American falls, and contract
+those of the Horseshoe.  Next appeared two traders of Michigan, who
+declared, that, upon the whole, the sight was worth looking at, there
+certainly was an immense water-power here; but that, after all, they
+would go twice as far to see the noble stone-works of Lockport, where
+the Grand Canal is locked down a descent of sixty feet.  They were
+succeeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in
+his hand, and a pack over his shoulders.  He advanced close to the edge
+of the rock, where his attention, at first wavering among the different
+components of the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horse
+shoe falls, which is, indeed, the central point of interest.  His whole
+soul seemed to go forth and be transported thither, till the staff
+slipped from his relaxed grasp, and falling down--down--down--struck
+upon the fragment of the Table Rock.
+
+In this manner I spent some hours, watching the varied impression, made
+by the cataract, on those who disturbed me, and returning to unwearied
+contemplation, when left alone.  At length my time came to depart.
+There is a grassy footpath, through the woods, along the summit of the
+bank, to a point whence a causeway, hewn in the side of the precipice,
+goes winding down to the Ferry, about half a mile below the Table Rock.
+The sun was near setting, when I emerged from the shadow of the trees,
+and began the descent.  The indirectness of my downward road continually
+changed the point of view, and showed me, in rich and repeated
+succession, now, the whitening rapids and majestic leap of the main
+river, which appeared more deeply massive as the light departed; now,
+the lovelier picture, yet still sublime, of Goat Island, with its rocks
+and grove, and the lesser falls, tumbling over the right bank of the St.
+Lawrence, like a tributary stream; now, the long vista of the river, as
+it eddied and whirled between the cliffs, to pass through Ontario toward
+the sea, and everywhere to be wondered at, for this one unrivalled
+scene.  The golden sunshine tinged the sheet of the American cascade,
+and painted on its heaving spray the broken semicircle of a rainbow,
+heaven's own beauty crowning earth's sublimity.  My steps were slow, and
+I paused long at every turn of the descent, as one lingers and pauses,
+who discerns a brighter and brightening excellence in what he must soon
+behold no more.  The solitude of the old wilderness now reigned over the
+whole vicinity of the falls.  My enjoyment became the more rapturous,
+because no poet shared it, nor wretch devoid of poetry profaned it; but
+the spot so famous through the world was all my own!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ANTIQUE RING.
+
+"Yes, indeed: the gem is as bright as a star, and curiously set," said
+Clara Pembertou, examining an antique ring, which her betrothed lover
+had just presented to her, with a very pretty speech.  "It needs only
+one thing to make it perfect."
+
+"And what is that?" asked Mr. Edward Caryl, secretly anxious for the
+credit of his gift.  "A modern setting, perhaps?"
+
+"O, no!  That would destroy the charm at once," replied Clara.  "It
+needs nothing but a story.  I long to know how many times it has been
+the pledge of faith between two lovers, and whether the vows, of which
+it was the symbol, were always kept or often broken.  Not that I should
+be too scrupulous about facts.  If you happen to be unacquainted with
+its authentic history, so much the better.  May it not have sparkled
+upon a queen's finger?  Or who knows but it is the very ring which
+Posthumus received from Imogen?  In short, you must kindle your
+imagination at the lustre of this diamond, and make a legend for it."
+
+Now such a task--and doubtless Clara knew it--was the most acceptable
+that could have been imposed on Edward Caryl.  He was one of that
+multitude of young gentlemen--limbs, or rather twigs of the law--whose
+names appear in gilt letters on the front of Tudor's Buildings, and
+other places in the vicinity of the Court House, which seem to be the
+haunt of the gentler as well as the severer Muses.  Edward, in the
+dearth of clients, was accustomed to employ his much leisure in
+assisting the growth of American Literature, to which good cause he had
+contributed not a few quires of the finest letter-paper, containing some
+thought, some fancy, some depth of feeling, together with a young
+writer's abundance of conceits.  Sonnets, stanzas of Tennysonian
+sweetness, tales imbued with German mysticism, versions from Jean Paul,
+criticisms of the old English poets, and essays smacking of Dialistic
+philosophy, were among his multifarious productions.  The editors of the
+fashionable periodicals were familiar with his autograph, and inscribed
+his name in those brilliant bead-rolls of ink-stained celebrity, which
+illustrate the first page of their covers.  Nor did fame withhold her
+laurel.  Hillard had included him among the lights of the New England
+metropolis, in his Boston Book; Bryant had found room for some of his
+stanzas, in the Selections from American Poetry; and Mr. Griswold, in
+his recent assemblage of the sons and daughters of song, had introduced
+Edward Caryl into the inner court of the temple, among his fourscore
+choicest bards.  There was a prospect, indeed, of his assuming a still
+higher and more independent position.  Interviews had been held with
+Ticknor, and a correspondence with the Harpers, respecting a proposed
+volume, chiefly to consist of Mr. Caryl's fugitive pieces in the
+Magazines, but to be accompanied with a poem of some length, never
+before published.  Not improbably, the public may yet be gratified with
+this collection.
+
+Meanwhile, we sum up our sketch of Edward Caryl, by pronouncing him,
+though somewhat of a carpet knight in literature, yet no unfavorable
+specimen of a generation of rising writers, whose spirit is such that we
+may reasonably expect creditable attempts from all, and good and
+beautiful results from some.  And, it will be observed, Edward was the
+very man to write pretty legends, at a lady's instance, for an old-
+fashioned diamond ring.  He took the jewel in his hand, and turned it so
+as to catch its scintillating radiance, as if hoping, in accordance with
+Clara's suggestion, to light up his fancy with that starlike gleam.
+
+"Shall it be a ballad?--a tale in verse?" he inquired.  "Enchanted
+rings often glisten in old English poetry, I think something may be done
+with the subject; but it is fitter for rhyme than prose."
+
+"No, no," said Miss Pemberton, "we will have no more rhyme than just
+enough for a posy to the ring.  You must tell the legend in simple
+prose; and when it is finished, I will make a little party to hear it
+read."
+
+The young gentleman promised obedience; and going to his pillow, with
+his head full of the familiar spirits that used to be worn in rings,
+watches, and sword-hilts, he had the good fortune to possess himself of
+an available idea in a dream.  Connecting this with what he himself
+chanced to know of the ring's real history, his task was done.  Clara
+Pemberton invited a select few of her friends, all holding the stanchest
+faith in Edward's genius, and therefore the most genial auditors, if not
+altogether the fairest critics, that a writer could possibly desire.
+Blessed be woman for her faculty of admiration, and especially for her
+tendency to admire with her heart, when man, at most, grants merely a
+cold approval with his mind!
+
+Drawing his chair beneath the blaze of a solar lamp, Edward Caryl untied
+a roll of glossy paper, and began as follows:--
+
+
+THE LEGEND
+
+After the death-warrant had been read to the Earl of Essex, and on the
+evening before his appointed execution, the Countess of Shrewsbury paid
+his lordship a visit, and found him, as it appeared, toying childishly
+with a ring.  The diamond, that enriched it, glittered like a little
+star, but with a singular tinge of red.  The gloomy prison-chamber in
+the Tower, with its deep and narrow windows piercing the walls of stone,
+was now all that the earl possessed of worldly prospect; so that there
+was the less wonder that he should look steadfastly into the gem, and
+moralize upon earth's deceitful splendor, as men in darkness and ruin
+seldom fail to do.  But the shrewd observations of the countess,--an
+artful and unprincipled woman,--the pretended friend of Essex, but who
+had come to glut her revenge for a deed of scorn which he himself had
+forgotten,--her keen eye detected a deeper interest attached to this
+jewel.  Even while expressing his gratitude for her remembrance of a
+ruined favorite, and condemned criminal, the earl's glance reverted to
+the ring, as if all that remained of time and its affairs were collected
+within that small golden circlet.
+
+"My dear lord," observed the countess, "there is surely some matter of
+great moment wherewith this ring is connected, since it, so absorbs your
+mind.  A token, it may be, of some fair lady's love,--alas, poor lady,
+once richest in possessing such a heart!  Would you that the jewel be
+returned to her?"
+
+"The queen! the queen!  It was her Majesty's own gift," replied the
+earl, still gazing into the depths of the gem.  "She took it from her
+finger, and told me, with a smile, that it was an heirloom from her
+Tudor ancestors, and had once been the property of Merlin, the British
+wizard, who gave it to the lady of his love.  His art had made this
+diamond the abiding-place of a spirit, which, though of fiendish nature,
+was bound to work only good, so long as the ring was an unviolated
+pledge of love and faith, both with the giver and receiver.  But should
+love prove false, and faith be broken, then the evil spirit would work
+his own devilish will, until the ring were purified by becoming the
+medium of some good and holy act, and again the pledge of faithful love.
+The gem soon lost its virtue; for the wizard was murdered by the very
+lady to whom he gave it."
+
+"An idle legend!" said the countess.
+
+"It is so," answered Essex, with a melancholy smile.  "Yet the queen's
+favor, of which this ring was the symbol, has proved my ruin.  When
+death is nigh, men converse with dreams and shadows.  I have been gazing
+into the diamond, and fancying--but you will laugh at me--that I might
+catch a glimpse of the evil spirit there.  Do you observe this red
+glow,--dusky, too, amid all the brightness?  It is the token of his
+presence; and even now, methinks, it grows redder and duskier, like an
+angry sunset."
+
+Nevertheless, the earl's manner testified how slight was his credence in
+the enchanted properties of the ring.  But there is a kind of
+playfulness that comes in moments of despair, when the reality of
+misfortune, if entirely felt, would crush the soul at once.  He now, for
+a brief space, was lost in thought, while the countess contemplated him
+with malignant satisfaction.
+
+"This ring," he resumed, in another tone, "alone remains, of all that my
+royal mistress's favor lavished upon her servant.  My fortune once shone
+as brightly as the gem.  And now, such a darkness has fallen around me,
+methinks it would be no marvel if its gleam--the sole light of my
+prison-house--were to be forthwith extinguished; inasmuch as my last
+earthly hope depends upon it."
+
+"How say you, my lord?"  asked the Countess of Shrewsbury.  "The stone
+is bright; but there should be strange magic in it, if it can keep your
+hopes alive, at this sad hour.  Alas! these iron bars and ramparts of
+the Tower are unlike to yield to such a spell."
+
+Essex raised his head involuntarily; for there was something in the
+countess's tone that disturbed him, although he could not suspect that
+an enemy had intruded upon the sacred privacy of a prisoner's dungeon,
+to exult over so dark a ruin of such once brilliant fortunes.  He looked
+her in the face, but saw nothing to awaken his distrust.  It would have
+required a keener eye than even Cecil's to read the secret of a
+countenance, which had been worn so long in the false light of a court,
+that it was now little better than a mask, telling any story save the
+true one.  The condemned nobleman again bent over the ring, and
+proceeded:
+
+"It once had power in it,--this bright gem,--the magic that appertains
+to the talisman of a great queen's favor.  She bade me, if hereafter I
+should fall into her disgrace,--how deep soever, and whatever might be
+the crime,--to convey this jewel to her sight, and it should plead for
+me.  Doubtless, with her piercing judgment, she had even then detected
+the rashness of my nature, and foreboded some such deed as has now
+brought destruction upon my bead.  And knowing, too, her own hereditary
+rigor, she designed, it may be, that the memory of gentler and kindlier
+hours should soften her heart in my behalf, when my need should be the
+greatest.  I have doubted,--I have distrusted,--yet who can tell, even
+now, what happy influence this ring might have?"
+
+"You have delayed full long to show the ring, and plead her Majesty's
+gracious promise," remarked the countess,--"your state being what it
+is."
+
+"True," replied the earl: "but for my honor's sake, I was loath to
+entreat the queen's mercy, while I might hope for life, at least, from
+the justice of the laws.  If, on a trial by my peers, I had been
+acquitted of meditating violence against her sacred life, then would I
+have fallen at her feet, and presenting the jewel, have prayed no other
+favor than that my love and zeal should be put to the severest test.
+But now--it were confessing too much--it were cringing too low--to beg
+the miserable gift of life, on no other score than the tenderness which
+her Majesty deems one to have forfeited!"
+
+"Yet it is your only hope," said the countess.
+
+"And besides," continued Essex, pursuing his own reflections, "of what
+avail will be this token of womanly feeling, when, on the other hand,
+are arrayed the all-prevailing motives of state policy, and the
+artifices and intrigues of courtiers, to consummate my downfall?  Will
+Cecil or Raleigh suffer her heart to act for itself, even if the spirit
+of her father were not in her?  It is in vain to hope it."
+
+But still Essex gazed at the ring with an absorbed attention, that
+proved how much hope his sanguine temperament had concentrated here,
+when there was none else for him in the wide world, save what lay in the
+compass of that hoop of gold.  The spark of brightness within the
+diamond, which gleamed like an intenser than earthly fire, was the
+memorial of his dazzling career.  It had not paled with the waning
+sunshine of his mistress's favor; on the contrary, in spite of its
+remarkable tinge of dusky red, he fancied that it never shone so
+brightly.  The glow of festal torches,--the blaze of perfumed lamps,--
+bonfires that had been kindled for him, when he was the darling of the
+people,--the splendor of the royal court, where he had been the peculiar
+star,--all seemed to have collected their moral or material glory into
+the gem, and to burn with a radiance caught from the future, as well as
+gathered from the past.  That radiance might break forth again.
+Bursting from the diamond, into which it was now narrowed, it might been
+first upon the gloomy walls of the Tower,--then wider, wider, wider,--
+till all England, and the seas around her cliffs, should be gladdened
+with the light.  It was such an ecstasy as often ensues after long
+depression, and has been supposed to precede the circumstances of
+darkest fate that may befall mortal man.  The earl pressed the ring to
+his heart as if it were indeed a talisman, the habitation of a spirit,
+as the queen had playfully assured him,--but a spirit of happier
+influences than her legend spake of.
+
+"O, could I but make my way to her footstool!"  cried he, waving his
+hand aloft, while he paced the stone pavement of his prison-chamber with
+an impetuous step.  "I might kneel down, indeed, a ruined man, condemned
+to the block, but how should I rise again?  Once more the favorite of
+Elizabeth!--England's proudest noble!--with such prospects as ambition
+never aimed at!  Why have I tarried so long in this weary dungeon?  The
+ring has power to set me free!  The palace wants me!  Ho, jailer, unbar
+the door!"
+
+But then occurred the recollection of the impossibility of obtaining an
+interview with his fatally estranged mistress, and testing the influence
+over her affections, which he still flattered himself with possessing.
+Could he step beyond the limits of his prison, the world would be all
+sunshine; but here was only gloom and death.
+
+"Alas!" said he, slowly and sadly, letting his head fall upon his hands.
+"I die for the lack of one blessed word."
+
+The Countess of Shrewsbury, herself forgotten amid the earl's gorgeous
+visions, had watched him with an aspect that could have betrayed nothing
+to the most suspicious observer; unless that it was too calm for
+humanity, while witnessing the flutterings, as it were, of a generous
+heart in the death-agony.  She now approached him.
+
+"My good lord," she said, "what mean you to do?"
+
+"Nothing,--my deeds are done!" replied he, despondingly; "yet, had a
+fallen favorite any friends, I would entreat one of them to lay this
+ring at her Majesty's feet; albeit with little hope, save that,
+hereafter, it might remind her that poor Essex, once far too highly
+favored, was at last too severely dealt with."
+
+"I will be that friend," said the countess.  "There is no time to be
+lost.  Trust this precious ring with me.  This very night the queen's
+eye shall rest upon it; nor shall the efficacy of my poor words be
+wanting, to strengthen the impression which it will doubtless make."
+
+The earl's first impulse was to hold out the ring.  But looking at the
+countess, as she bent forward to receive it, he fancied that the red
+glow of the gem tinged all her face, and gave it an ominous expression.
+Many passages of past times recurred to his memory.  A preternatural
+insight, perchance caught from approaching death, threw its momentary
+gleam, as from a meteor, all round his position.
+
+"Countess," he said, "I know not wherefore I hesitate, being in a plight
+so desperate, and having so little choice of friends.  But have you
+looked into your own heart?  Can you perform this office with the truth
+--the earnestness--time--zeal, even to tears, and agony of spirit--
+wherewith the holy gift of human life should be pleaded for?  Woe be
+unto you, should you undertake this task, and deal towards me otherwise
+than with utmost faith!  For your own soul's sake, and as you would have
+peace at your death-hour, consider well in what spirit you receive this
+ring!"
+
+The countess did not shrink.
+
+"My lord!--my good lord!" she exclaimed, "wrong not a woman's heart by
+these suspicious.  You might choose another messenger; but who, save a
+lady of her bedchamber, can obtain access to the queen at this untimely
+hour?  It is for your life,--for your life,--else I would not renew my
+offer."
+
+"Take the ring," said the earl.
+
+"Believe that it shall be in the queen's hands before the lapse of
+another hour," replied the countess, as she received this sacred trust
+of life and death.  "To-morrow morning look for the result of my
+intercession."
+
+She departed.  Again the earl's hopes rose high.  Dreams visited his
+slumber, not of the sable-decked scaffold in the Tower-yard, but of
+canopies of state, obsequious courtiers, pomp, splendor, the smile of
+the once more gracious queen, and a light beaming from the magic gem,
+which illuminated his whole future.
+
+History records how foully the Countess of Shrewsbury betrayed the
+trust, which Essex, in his utmost need, confided to her.  She kept the
+ring, and stood in the presence of Elizabeth, that night, without one
+attempt to soften her stern hereditary temper in behalf of the former
+favorite.  The next day the earl's noble head rolled upon the scaffold.
+On her death-bed, tortured, at last, with a sense of the dreadful guilt
+which she had taken upon her soul, the wicked countess sent for
+Elizabeth, revealed the story of the ring, and besought forgiveness for
+her treachery.  But the queen, still obdurate, even while remorse for
+past obduracy was tugging at her heart-strings, shook the dying woman in
+her bed, as if struggling with death for the privilege of wreaking her
+revenge and spite.  The spirit of the countess passed away, to undergo
+the justice, or receive the mercy, of a higher tribunal; and tradition
+says, that the fatal ring was found upon her breast, where it had
+imprinted a dark red circle, resembling the effect of the intensest
+heat.  The attendants, who prepared the body for burial, shuddered,
+whispering one to another, that the ring must have derived its heat from
+the glow of infernal fire.  They left it on her breast, in the coffin,
+and it went with that guilty woman to the tomb.
+
+Many years afterward, when the church, that contained the monuments of
+the Shrewsbury family, was desecrated by Cromwell's soldiers, they broke
+open the ancestral vaults, and stole whatever was valuable from the
+noble personages who reposed there.  Merlin's antique ring passed into
+the possession of a stout sergeant of the Ironsides, who thus became
+subject to the influences of the evil spirit that still kept his abode
+within the gem's enchanted depths.  The sergeant was soon slain in
+battle, thus transmitting the ring, though without any legal form of
+testament, to a gay cavalier, who forthwith pawned it, and expended the
+money in liquor, which speedily brought him to the grave.  We next catch
+the sparkle of the magic diamond at various epochs of the merry reign of
+Charles the Second.  But its sinister fortune still attended it.  From
+whatever hand this ring of portent came, and whatever finger it
+encircled, ever it was the pledge of deceit between man and man, or man
+and woman, of faithless vows, and unhallowed passion; and whether to
+lords and ladies, or to village-maids,--for sometimes it found its way
+so low,--still it brought nothing but sorrow and disgrace.  No purifying
+deed was done, to drive the fiend from his bright home in this little
+star.  Again, we hear of it at a later period, when Sir Robert Walpole
+bestowed the ring, among far richer jewels, on the lady of a British
+legislator, whose political honor he wished to undermine.  Many a dismal
+and unhappy tale might be wrought out of its other adventures.  All this
+while, its ominous tinge of dusky red had been deepening and darkening,
+until, if laid upon white paper, it cast the mingled hue of night and
+blood, strangely illuminated with scintillating light, in a circle round
+about.  But this peculiarity only made it the more valuable.
+
+Alas, the fatal ring!  When shall its dark secret be discovered, and the
+doom of ill, inherited from one possessor to another, be finally
+revoked?
+
+The legend now crosses the Atlantic, and comes down to our own immediate
+time.  In a certain church of our city, not many evenings ago, there was
+a contribution for a charitable object.  A fervid preacher had poured
+out his whole soul in a rich and tender discourse, which had at least
+excited the tears, and perhaps the more effectual sympathy, of a
+numerous audience.  While the choristers sang sweetly, and the organ
+poured forth its melodious thunder, the deacons passed up and down the
+aisles, and along the galleries, presenting their mahogany boxes, in
+which each person deposited whatever sum he deemed it safe to lend to
+the Lord, in aid of human wretchedness.  Charity became audible,--chink,
+chink, chink,--as it fell, drop by drop, into the common receptacle.
+There was a hum,--a stir,--the subdued bustle of people putting their
+hands into their pockets; while, ever and anon, a vagrant coin fell upon
+the floor, and rolled away, with long reverberation, into some
+inscrutable corner.
+
+At length, all having been favored with an opportunity to be generous,
+the two deacons placed their boxes on the communion-table, and thence,
+at the conclusion of the services, removed them into the vestry.  Here
+these good old gentlemen sat down together, to reckon the accumulated
+treasure.
+
+"Fie, fie, Brother Tilton," said Deacon Trott, peeping into Deacon
+Tilton's box, "what a heap of copper you have picked up!  Really, for an
+old man, you must have had a heavy job to lug it along.  Copper!
+copper! copper!  Do people expect to get admittance into heaven at the
+price of a few coppers?"
+
+"Don't wrong them, brother," answered Deacon Tilton, a simple and kindly
+old man.  "Copper may do more for one person, than gold will for
+another.  In the galleries, where I present my box, we must not expect
+such a harvest as you gather among the gentry in the broad aisle, and
+all over the floor of the church.  My people are chiefly poor mechanics
+and laborers, sailors, seamstresses, and servant-maids, with a most
+uncomfortable intermixture of roguish school-boys."
+
+"Well, well," said Deacon Trott; "but there is a great deal, Brother
+Tilton, in the method of presenting a contribution-box.  It is a knack
+that comes by nature, or not at all."
+
+They now proceeded to sum up the avails of the evening, beginning with
+the receipts of Deacon Trott.  In good sooth, that worthy personage had
+reaped an abundant harvest, in which he prided himself no less,
+apparently, than if every dollar had been contributed from his own
+individual pocket.  Had the good deacon been meditating a jaunt to
+Texas, the treasures of the mahogany box might have sent him on his way
+rejoicing.  There were bank-notes, mostly, it is true, of the smallest
+denominations in the giver's pocket-book, yet making a goodly average
+upon the whole.  The most splendid contribution was a check for a
+hundred dollars, bearing the name of a distinguished merchant, whose
+liberality was duly celebrated in the newspapers of the next day.  No
+less than seven half-eagles, together with an English sovereign,
+glittered amidst an indiscriminate heap of silver; the box being
+polluted with nothing of the copper kind, except a single bright new
+cent, wherewith a little boy had performed his first charitable act.
+
+"Very well! very well indeed!" said Deacon Trott, self-approvingly.
+"A handsome evening's work!  And now, Brother Tilton, let's see whether
+you can match it."  Here was a sad contrast!  They poured forth Deacon
+Tilton's treasure upon the table, and it really seemed as if the whole
+copper coinage of the country, together with an amazing quantity of
+shop-keeper's tokens, and English and Irish half-pence, mostly of base
+metal, had been congregated into the box.  There was a very substantial
+pencil-case, and the semblance of a shilling; but he latter proved to be
+made of tin, and the former of German-silver.  A gilded brass button was
+doing duty as a gold coin, and a folded shopbill had assumed the
+character of a bank-note.  But Deacon Tilton's feelings were much
+revived by the aspect of another bank-note, new and crisp, adorned with
+beautiful engravings, and stamped with the indubitable word, TWENTY, in
+large black letters.  Alas! it was a counterfeit.  In short, the poor
+old Deacon was no less unfortunate than those who trade with fairies,
+and whose gains are sure to be transformed into dried leaves, pebbles,
+and other valuables of that kind.
+
+"I believe the Evil One is in the box," said he, with some vexation.
+
+"Well done, Deacon Tilton!" cried his Brother Trott, with a hearty
+laugh.  "You ought to have a statue in copper."
+
+"Never mind, brother," replied the good Deacon, recovering his temper.
+"I'll bestow ten dollars from my own pocket, and may heaven's blessing
+go along with it.  But look!  what do you call this?"
+
+Under the copper mountain, which it had cost them so much toil to
+remove, lay an antique ring!  It was enriched with a diamond, which, so
+soon as it caught the light, began to twinkle and glimmer, emitting the
+whitest and purest lustre that could possibly be conceived.--It was as
+brilliant as if some magician had condensed the brightest star in heaven
+into a compass fit to be set in a ring, for a lady's delicate finger.
+
+"How is this?" said Deacon Trott, examining it carefully, in the
+expectation of finding it as worthless as the rest of his colleague's
+treasure.  "Why, upon my word, this seems to be a real diamond, and of
+the purest water.  Whence could it have come?"
+
+"Really, I cannot tell," quoth Deacon Tilton, "for my spectacles were so
+misty that all faces looked alike.  But now I remember, there was a
+flash of light came from the box, at one moment; but it seemed a dusky
+red, instead of a pure white, like the sparkle of this gem.  Well; the
+ring will make up for the copper; but I wish the giver had thrown its
+history into the box along with it."
+
+It has been our good luck to recover a portion of that history.  After
+transmitting misfortune from one possessor to another, ever since the
+days of British Merlin, the identical ring which Queen Elizabeth gave to
+the Earl of Essex was finally thrown into the contribution-box of a New
+England church.  The two deacons deposited it in the glass case of a
+fashionable jeweller, of whom it was purchased by the humble rehearser
+of this legend, in the hope that it may be allowed to sparkle on a fair
+lady's finger.  Purified from the foul fiend, so long its inhabitant, by
+a deed of unostentatious charity, and now made the symbol of faithful
+and devoted love, the gentle bosom of its new possessor need fear no
+sorrow from its influence.
+
+Very pretty!--Beautiful!--How original!--How sweetly written!--What
+nature!--What imagination!--What power!--What pathos!--What exquisite
+humor!"--were the exclamations of Edward Caryl's kind and generous
+auditors, at the conclusion of the legend.
+
+"It is a pretty tale," said Miss Pemberton, who, conscious that her
+praise was to that of all others as a diamond to a pebble, was therefore
+the less liberal in awarding it.  "It is really a pretty tale, and very
+proper for any of the Annuals.  But, Edward, your moral does not satisfy
+me.  What thought did you embody in the ring?"
+
+"O Clara, this is too bad!" replied Edward, with a half-reproachful
+smile.  "You know that I can never separate the idea from the symbol in
+which it manifests itself.  However, we may suppose the Gem to be the
+human heart, and the Evil Spirit to be Falsehood, which, in one guise or
+another, is the fiend that causes all the sorrow and trouble in the
+world.  I beseech you to let this suffice."
+
+"It shall," said Clara, kindly.  "And, believe me, whatever the world
+may say of the story, I prize it far above the diamond which enkindled
+your imagination."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+GRAVES AND GOBLINS.
+
+Now talk we of graves and goblins!  Fit themes,--start not! gentle
+reader,--fit for a ghost like me.  Yes; though an earth-clogged fancy is
+laboring with these conceptions, and an earthly hand will write them
+down, for mortal eyes to read, still their essence flows from as airy a
+ghost as ever basked in the pale starlight, at twelve o'clock.  Judge
+them not by the gross and heavy form in which they now appear.  They may
+be gross, indeed, with the earthly pollution contracted from the brain,
+through which they pass; and heavy with the burden of mortal language,
+that crushes all the finer intelligences of the soul.  This is no fault
+of mine.  But should aught of ethereal spirit be perceptible, yet
+scarcely so, glimmering along the dull train of words,--should a faint
+perfume breathe from the mass of clay,--then, gentle reader, thank the
+ghost, who thus embodies himself for your sake!  Will you believe me, if
+I say that all true and noble thoughts, and elevated imaginations, are
+but partly the offspring of the intellect which seems to produce them?
+Sprites, that were poets once, and are now all poetry, hover round the
+dreaming bard, and become his inspiration; buried statesmen lend their
+wisdom, gathered on earth and mellowed in the grave, to the historian;
+and when the preacher rises nearest to the level of his mighty subject,
+it is because the prophets of old days have communed with him.  Who has
+not been conscious of mysteries within his mind, mysteries of truth and
+reality, which will not wear the chains of language?  Mortal, then the
+dead were with you!  And thus shall the earth-dulled soul, whom I
+inspire, be conscious of a misty brightness among his thoughts, and
+strive to make it gleam upon the page,--but all in vain.  Poor author!
+How will he despise what he can grasp, for the sake of the dim glory
+that eludes him!
+
+So talk we of graves and goblins.  But, what have ghosts to do with
+graves?  Mortal man, wearing the dust which shall require a sepulchre,
+might deem it more a home and resting-place than a spirit can, whose
+earthly clod has returned to earth.  Thus philosophers have reasoned.
+Yet wiser they who adhere to the ancient sentiment, that a phantom
+haunts and hallows the marble tomb or grassy hillock where its material
+form was laid.  Till purified from each stain of clay; till the passions
+of the living world are all forgotten; till it have less brotherhood
+with the wayfarers of earth, than with spirits that never wore
+mortality,--the ghost must linger round the grave.  O, it is a long and
+dreary watch to some of us!
+
+Even in early childhood, I had selected a sweet spot, of shade and
+glimmering sunshine, for my grave.  It was no burial-ground, but a
+secluded nook of virgin earth, where I used to sit, whole summer
+afternoons, dreaming about life and death.  My fancy ripened
+prematurely, and taught me secrets which I could not otherwise have
+known.  I pictured the coming years,--they never came to me, indeed; but
+I pictured them like life, and made this spot the scene of all that
+should be brightest, in youth, manhood, and old age.  There, in a little
+while, it would be time for me to breathe the bashful and burning vows
+of first-love; thither, after gathering fame abroad, I would return to
+enjoy the loud plaudit of the world, a vast but unobtrusive sound, like
+the booming of a distant sea; and thither, at the far-off close of life,
+an aged man would come, to dream, as the boy was dreaming, and be as
+happy in the past as lie was in futurity.  Finally, when all should be
+finished, in that spot so hallowed, in that soil so impregnated with the
+most precious of my bliss, there was to be my grave.  Methought it would
+be the sweetest grave that ever a mortal frame reposed in, or an
+ethereal spirit haunted.  There, too, in future times, drawn thither by
+the spell which I had breathed around the place, boyhood would sport and
+dream, and youth would love, and manhood would enjoy, and age would
+dream again, and my ghost would watch but never frighten them.  Alas,
+the vanity of mortal projects, even when they centre in the grave!  I
+died in my first youth, before I had been a lover; at a distance, also,
+from the grave which fancy had dug for me; and they buried me in the
+thronged cemetery of a town, where my marble slab stands unnoticed amid
+a hundred others.  And there are coffins on each side of mine!
+
+"Alas, poor ghost!" will the reader say.  Yet I am a happy ghost enough,
+and disposed to be contented with my grave, if the sexton will but let
+it be my own, and bring no other dead man to dispute my title.  Earth
+has left few stains upon me, and it will be but a short time that I need
+haunt the place.  It is good to die in early youth.  Had I lived out
+threescore years and ten, or half of them, my spirit would have been so
+earth-incrusted, that centuries might not have purified it for a better
+home than the dark precincts of the grave.  Meantime, there is good
+choice of company amongst us.  From twilight till near sunrise, we are
+gliding to and fro, some in the graveyard, others miles away; and would
+we speak with any friend, we do but knock against his tombstone, and
+pronounce the name engraved on it: in an instant, there the shadow
+stands!
+
+Some are ghosts of considerable antiquity.  There is an old man,
+hereabout; he never had a tombstone, and is often puzzled to distinguish
+his own grave; but hereabouts he haunts, and long is doomed to haunt.
+He was a miser in his lifetime, and buried a strong box of ill-gotten
+gold, almost fresh from the mint, in the coinage of William and Mary.
+Scarcely was it safe, when the sexton buried the old man and his secret
+with him.  I could point out the place where the treasure lies; it was
+at the bottom of the miser's garden; but a paved thoroughfare now passes
+beside the spot, and the cornerstone of a market-house presses right
+down upon it.  Had the workmen dug six inches deeper, they would have
+found the hoard.  Now thither must this poor old miser go, whether in
+starlight, moonshine, or pitch darkness, and brood above his worthless
+treasure, recalling all the petty crimes by which he gained it.  Not a
+coin must he fail to reckon in his memory, nor forget a pennyworth of
+the sin that made up the sum, though his agony is such as if the pieces
+of gold, red-hot, were stamped into his naked soul.  Often, while he is
+in torment there, he hears the steps of living men, who love the dross
+of earth as well as he did.  May they never groan over their miserable
+wealth like him!  Night after night, for above a hundred years, hath he
+done this penance, and still must he do it, till the iron box be brought
+to light, and each separate coin be cleansed by grateful tears of a
+widow or an orphan.  My spirit sighs for his long vigil at the corner of
+the market-house!
+
+There are ghosts whom I tremble to meet, and cannot think of without a
+shudder.  One has the guilt of blood upon him.  The soul which he thrust
+untimely forth has long since been summoned from our gloomy graveyard,
+and dwells among the stars of heaven, too far and too high for even the
+recollection of mortal anguish to ascend thither.  Not so the murderer's
+ghost!  It is his doom to spend all the hours of darkness in the spot
+which he stained with innocent blood, and to feel the hot stream--hot as
+when it first gushed upon his hand--incorporating itself with his
+spiritual substance.  Thus his horrible crime is ever fresh within him.
+Two other wretches are condemned to walk arm in arm.  They were guilty
+lovers in their lives, and still, in death, must wear the guise of love,
+though hatred and loathing have become their very nature and existence.
+The pollution of their mutual sin remains with them, and makes their
+souls sick continually.  O, that I might forget all the dark shadows
+which haunt about these graves!  This passing thought of them has left a
+stain, and will weigh me down among dust and sorrow, beyond the time
+that my own transgressions would have kept me here. There is one shade
+among us, whose high nature it is good to meditate upon.  He lived a
+patriot, and is a patriot still.  Posterity has forgotten him.  The
+simple slab, of red freestone, that bore his name, was broken long ago,
+and is now covered by the gradual accumulation of the soil.  A tuft of
+thistles is his only monument. This upright spirit came to his grave,
+after a lengthened life, with so little stain of earth, that he might,
+almost immediately, have trodden the pathway of the sky.  But his strong
+love of country chained him down, to share its vicissitudes of weal or
+woe.  With such deep yearning in his soul, he was unfit for heaven.
+That noblest virtue has the effect of sin, and keeps his pure and lofty
+spirit in a penance, which may not terminate till America be again a
+wilderness.  Not that there is no joy for the dead patriot.  Can he fail
+to experience it, while be contemplates the mighty and increasing power
+of the land, which be protected in its infancy?  No; there is much to
+gladden him.  But sometimes I dread to meet him, as he returns from the
+bedchambers of rulers and politicians, after diving into their secret
+motives, and searching out their aims.  He looks round him with a stern
+and awful sadness, and vanishes into his neglected grave.  Let nothing
+sordid or selfish defile your deeds or thoughts, ye great men of the
+day, lest ye grieve the noble dead.
+
+Few ghosts take such an endearing interest as this, even in their own
+private affairs.  It made me rather sad, at first, to find how soon the
+flame of love expires amid the chill damps of the tomb; so much the
+sooner, the more fiercely it may have burned.  Forget your dead
+mistress, youth!  She has already forgotten you.  Maiden, cease to weep
+for your buried lover!  He will know nothing of your tears, nor value
+them if he did.  Yet it were blasphemy to say that true love is other
+than immortal.  It is an earthly passion, of which I speak, mingled with
+little that is spiritual, and must therefore perish with the perishing
+clay.  When souls have loved, there is no falsehood or forgetfulness.
+Maternal affection, too, is strong as adamant.  There are mothers here,
+among us, who might have been in heaven fifty years ago, if they could
+forbear to cherish earthly joy and sorrow, reflected from the bosoms of
+their children.  Husbands and wives have a comfortable gift of oblivion,
+especially when secure of the faith of their living halves.  Jealousy,
+it is true, will play the devil with a ghost, driving him to the bedside
+of secondary wedlock, there to scowl, unseen, and gibber inaudible
+remonstrances.  Dead wives, however jealous in their lifetime, seldom
+feel this posthumous torment so acutely.
+
+Many, many things, that appear most important while we walk the busy
+street, lose all their interest the moment we are borne into the quiet
+graveyard which borders it.  For my own part, my spirit had not become
+so mixed up with earthly existence, as to be now held in an unnatural
+combination, or tortured much with retrospective cares.  I still love my
+parents and a younger sister, who remain among the living, and often
+grieve me by their patient sorrow for the dead.  Each separate tear of
+theirs is an added weight upon my soul, and lengthens my stay among the
+graves.  As to other matters, it exceedingly rejoices me, that my
+summons came before I had time to write a projected poem, which was
+highly imaginative in conception, and could not have failed to give me a
+triumphant rank in the choir of our native bards.  Nothing is so much to
+be deprecated as posthumous renown.  It keeps the immortal spirit from
+the proper bliss of his celestial state, and causes him to feed upon the
+impure breath of mortal man, till sometimes he forgets that there are
+starry realms above him.  Few poets--infatuated that they are!--soar
+upward while the least whisper of their name is heard on earth.  On
+Sabbath evenings, my sisters sit by the fireside, between our father and
+mother, and repeat some hymns of mine, which they have often heard from
+my own lips, ere the tremulous voice left them forever.  Little do they
+think, those dear ones, that the dead stands listening in the glimmer of
+the firelight, and is almost gifted with a visible shape by the fond
+intensity of their remembrance.
+
+Now shall the reader know a grief of the poor ghost that speaks to him;
+a grief, but not a helpless one.  Since I have dwelt among the graves,
+they bore the corpse of a young maiden hither, and laid her in the old
+ancestral vault, which is hollowed in the side of a grassy bank.  It has
+a door of stone, with rusty iron hinges, and above it, a rude sculpture
+of the family arms, and inscriptions of all their names who have been
+buried there, including sire and son, mother and daughter, of an ancient
+colonial race.  All of her lineage had gone before, and when the young
+maiden followed, the portal was closed forever.  The night after her
+burial, when the other ghosts were flitting about their graves, forth
+came the pale virgin's shadow, with the rest, but knew not whither to
+go, nor whom to haunt, so lonesome had she been on earth.  She stood by
+the ancient sepulchre, looking upward to the bright stars, as if she
+would, even then, begin her flight.  Her sadness made me sad.  That
+night and the next, I stood near her, in the moonshine, but dared not
+speak, because she seemed purer than all the ghosts, and fitter to
+converse with angels than with men.  But the third bright eve, still
+gazing upward to the glory of the heavens, she sighed, and said, "When
+will my mother come for me?"  Her low, sweet voice emboldened me to
+speak, and she was kind and gentle, though so pure, and answered me
+again.  From that time, always at the ghostly hour, I sought the old
+tomb of her fathers, and either found her standing by the door, or
+knocked, and she appeared.  Blessed creature, that she was; her chaste
+spirit hallowed mine, and imparted such a celestial buoyancy, that I
+longed to grasp her hand, and fly,--upward, aloft, aloft!  I thought,
+too, that she only lingered here, till my earthlier soul should be
+purified for heaven.  One night, when the stars threw down the light
+that shadows love, I stole forth to the accustomed spot, and knocked,
+with my airy fingers, at her door.  She answered not.  Again I knocked,
+and breathed her name.  Where was she?  At once, the truth fell on my
+miserable spirit, and crushed it to the earth, among dead men's bones
+and mouldering dust, groaning in cold and desolate agony.  Her penance
+was over!  She had taken her trackless flight, and had found a home in
+the purest radiance of the upper stars, leaving me to knock at the stone
+portal of the darksome sepulchre.  But I know--I know, that angels
+hurried her away, or surely she would have whispered ere she fled!
+
+She is gone!  How could the grave imprison that unspotted one!  But her
+pure, ethereal spirit will not quite forget me, nor soar too high in
+bliss, till I ascend to join her.  Soon, soon be that hour!  I am weary
+of the earth-damps; they burden me; they choke me!  Already, I can float
+in the moonshine; the faint starlight will almost bear up my footsteps;
+the perfume of flowers, which grosser spirits love, is now too earthly a
+luxury for me.  Grave!  Grave! thou art not my home.  I must flit a
+little longer in thy night gloom, and then be gone,--far from the dust
+of the living and the dead,--far from the corruption that is around me,
+but no more within!
+
+A few times, I have visited the chamber of one who walks, obscure and
+lonely, on his mortal pilgrimage.  He will leave not many living
+friends, when he goes to join the dead, where his thoughts often stray,
+and he might better be.  I steal into his sleep, and play my part among
+the figures of his dreams.  I glide through the moonlight of his waking
+fancy, and whisper conceptions, which, with a strange thrill of fear, he
+writes down as his own.  I stand beside him now, at midnight, telling
+these dreamy truths with a voice so dream-like, that he mistakes them
+for fictions of a brain too prone to such.  Yet he glances behind him
+and shivers, while the lamp burns pale.  Farewell, dreamer,--waking or
+sleeping!  Your brightest dreams are fled; your mind grows too hard and
+cold for a spiritual guest to enter; you are earthly, too, and have all
+the sins of earth.  The ghost will visit you no more.
+
+But where is the maiden, holy and pure, though wearing a form of clay,
+that would have me bend over her pillow at midnight, and leave a
+blessing there?  With a silent invocation, let her summon me.  Shrink
+not, maiden, when I come!  In life, I was a high-souled youth,
+meditative, yet seldom sad, full of chaste fancies, and stainless from
+all grosser sin.  And now, ill death, I bring no loathsome smell of the
+grave, nor ghostly terrors,--but gentle, and soothing, and sweetly
+pensive influences.  Perhaps, just fluttering for the skies, my visit
+may hallow the wellsprings of thy thought, and make thee heavenly here
+on earth.  Then shall pure dreams and holy meditations bless thy life;
+nor thy sainted spirit linger round the grave, but seek the upper stars,
+and meet me there!
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, OTHER TALES AND SKETCHES ***
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