tormenting his fellow-imps!

But alas! to his mortification, nothing of the kind is occurring or seems
likely to occur.

He has been as active as the next man since his arrival in ghostdom. He
has peeped under the _chapeaux_ of every solemn pilgrim whom he has
passed, but failed to find the four-and-twenty elders who have washed
their robes in the blood of the Lamb. What has he found? He really is
ashamed to own up to the number of mountain sides and sloping hills he
has inspected in the vain search for a place he used to call h---- (he
thought it blasphemy to add the other three letters); but neither cloven
foot, nor forked tail, nor horns, nor any kind of fearful person in
black, has pounced upon him; nor has he been seized by any claimant for
leaving the world unshriven, as he did.

Poor Will Thackeray! it has been a great disappointment to him! He
expected some kind of sensational reception--thunder or lightning, or
some big God whose towering front might vie with Chimborazo--to awe him
into the consideration that he had become a spirit and was launched into
the awful precincts of eternity! No wonder he feels dogged and put upon
to find himself thus bamboozled! He undertook a long and venturesome
journey to "see the elephant," but it wasn't there!

He can't complain against the citizens of this famous "undiscovered
bourne"; they have done all that's fair and square by him; they have
shown all that they have got; and he is too much of a gentleman to taunt
them. He knows they feel ashamed that they haven't those curiosities that
their Vicegerents on earth had vouched for their having; he can see it in
their faces; but he considers himself in duty bound to prepare his