shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child
running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the
creature why she did not have it cut short. "It was my grandmother's,"
said the child; "would you have her going about yonder with her
petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days?" I have read a
story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had made
her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her
knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like
their earthly homes, only there the thatch will never grow leaky, nor
the white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time
empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent
or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the
righteous from the unrighteous.


1892 and 1902.




THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES


Sometimes when I have been shut off from common interests, and have
for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint
and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world
under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond the
power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will, and
sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands. One day
I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went a circular