season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and
murders, and blood.

There is a good deal of similarity about our ghostly experiences;
but this of course is not our fault but the fault ghosts, who never
will try any new performances, but always will keep steadily to
old, safe business. The consequence is that, when you have been at
one Christmas Eve party, and heard six people relate their
adventures with spirits, you do not require to hear any more ghost
stories. To listen to any further ghost stories after that would
be like sitting out two farcical comedies, or taking in two comic
journals; the repetition would become wearisome.

There is always the young man who was, one year, spending the
Christmas at a country house, and, on Christmas Eve, they put him
to sleep in the west wing. Then in the middle of the night, the
room door quietly opens and somebody--generally a lady in her
night-dress--walks slowly in, and comes and sits on the bed. The
young man thinks it must be one of the visitors, or some relative
of the family, though he does not remember having previously seen
her, who, unable to go to sleep, and feeling lonesome, all by
herself, has come into his room for a chat. He has no idea it is a
ghost: he is so unsuspicious. She does not speak, however; and,
when he looks again, she is gone!

The young man relates the circumstance at the breakfast-table next
morning, and asks each of the ladies present if it were she who was
his visitor. But they all assure him that it was not, and the
host, who has grown deadly pale, begs him to say no more about the
matter, which strikes the young man as a singularly strange