owing to the wickedness of this sentiment, and I was thinking of the
possibility of seeing Auld Nick guarding his property, when my attention
was attracted to a tall, white figure in the bright moonlight, outside
the graveyard fence.

I stopped an instant, in great surprise, and listened for footsteps, but
no sound accompanied the motion. It did not walk, but glided, and must
have risen out of the ground, for only a moment before there was nothing
visible. I clasped my hands in mute wonder, but my ghost was getting
away, and to make its acquaintance I must hurry. Crossing the street I
ran after and gained on it. It passed into the shadow of the engine
house, on across Sixth street, into the moonlight, then into the shadow,
before I overtook it, when lo! it was a mortal woman, barefoot, in a
dress which was probably a faded print. Most prints faded then, and this
was white, long and scant, making a very ghostly robe, while on her head
she carried a bundle tied up in a sheet. She had, of course, come out of
Virgin alley, where many laundresses lived, and had just passed out of
the shadow when I saw her. We exchanged salutations, and I went home to
lie and brood over the unreliable nature of ghosts.

I was trying to get into a proper frame of mind for saying my prayers,
but I doubt if they were said that night, as we were soon aroused by the
cries of fire. Henry Clay was being burned, in effigy, on the corner of
Sixth and Wood streets, to show somebody's disapproval of his course in
the election of John Quincy Adams. The Democratic editor, McFarland, was
tried and found guilty of the offense, and took revenge in ridiculing
his opponents. Charles Glenn, a fussy old gentleman, member of our
church, was an important witness for the prosecution, and in the long,
rhyming account published by the defendant, he was thus remembered: