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830, but
I am not sure to a day about the date, for naturally we don't care so
much about time when we are facing something else."

"Suppose I get you a pair of crutches?" said the young man with deep
sympathy. The ghost said they could do no good, but that he was grateful
that there was someone who showed a little feeling for one so long dead.
He added that he hoped to get his release soon, as he had always been as
good a man as he knew how to be, and when he did get his passport he
would not need legs.

Almost as soon as he had said this the poor ghost sat back in his chair
and went to sleep. After several vain attempts to rouse him the young
man wandered around a little. He found that while he had been in the
card and billiard rooms the tables for the banquet had been prepared,
and he looked around in surprised admiration.

Each table was more than a hundred feet long, and there were so many of
them that he soon gave up the attempt to count them all. The covers set
on each table were seventy-five on each side with a seat of honor at the
head.

The table service was something wonderful. It recalled a day when he
went to see the preparations for a grand banquet at the home of the late
W. H. Vanderbilt. All along three sides of the large dining room there
were glass cabinets reaching to the ceiling, and in these there were
great silver plates, and platters, side dishes, tureens, punch bowls,
tankards, pitchers and goblets of every description, each a perfect work
of art after its kind.

There were golden dishes of many shapes, all richly wrought and not one
among them that was not worthy a close study for the beauty of form and
fine goldsmith's work. But not all of that mass of gold and silver put
together could balance the value and workmanship upon even one of the
articles which stood so thickly on these tables.

Great pitchers of gold in the most exquisite rehausse and repousse work,
filled to the brim with wine, stood all along the center of the tables,
and around each were clustered golden goblets, according to the number
of guests expected to be seated there. There were buffets in every
direction, and quite a number of men had apparently found them already.

Upon the tables were all the delicacies that one could have found at the
most perfectly appointed hotels. One table reminded the reporter of a
grand ball and house warming at the home of the late Ogden Goelet, where
there was not a piece of plate that was not duplicated here. Even the
napery looked the same and set the newspaper man to wondering whether
the ghosts did not borrow their plate and other things from the owners
for the occasion.

Above, the festoons of the incandescent lights in the form of flowers
shed their soft radiance, and also such perfume as would naturally
exhale from such blossoms. All was a pleasure to the eye and taste.

While the young man was standing at the head of the central table there
came the sound of a silvery note of music, such as might come from some
sort of a horn, but wonderfully sweet and clear. It appeared that this
was the signal for all the ghosts to take their places at the table. In
an amazingly short time they were seated.

The reporter found that he had not been included in the list of the
guests at the banquet. He felt a little vexed, though he really did not
feel hungry, and he had an idea that he did not want to eat with the
ghosts. He remembered a poem that he had read somewhere about ghosts
drinking out of skulls newly torn from the grave, and he smiled at the
contrast of these magnificent tables and viands.

The company was seated much as they would be at any other banquet, only
there were no waiters. Everyone was seated and they all waited on
themselves and each other, for, as he learned later the grave, like
love, levels all things. And this in spite of the class distinctions
mentioned before.

The ghosts were placed so that there was a lady and gentleman ghost side
by side. The gentlemen were as punctiliously polite as could be desired
and served the ladies with the greatest attention and assiduity.

At this juncture the Sociable Ghost came puffing up, much exercised, and
said: "My dear sir, I beg you to pardon my apparent neglect, but the fact
is there was a scrap between two famous old prize fighters, and you must
excuse me if I forgot everything else for the moment. Why, for a time I
really forgot that I was dead."

The young man murmured that he was quite excusable, and was about to
disclaim any appetite, when the Sociable Ghost continued: "I say! It was
fine! The old fellow put the kid to sleep in about ten minutes. We had a
chance to learn more about good sparring than we ever knew before. I am
sure that I could give an uppercut now such as was never known in my
day.

"But, you really must join us. I had a seat reserved for you at this
table where you can see everything that is going on, and where you will
have a chance to learn many things of which you never heard. Ladies and
gentlemen, permit me to introduce a friend of mine, who is not yet of
us, but whom I have invited to pass the evening with us. I hope you will
make him welcome for my sake until you learn to like him for his own."

There was a confused murmur intended as a welcome accompanied with bows
from all the guests at this table. The newspaper man saw that all these
ghosts were really hungry, and ate with genuine appetite. The wine was
poured out in generous quantities, and they drank as if exceedingly
thirsty, and soon the great hall rang with laughter, and lively sallies
of wit and anecdote. He tried so hard to listen to them all that to his
intense chagrin he found afterward that he could not remember half of it
and what he did recollect was so disjointed that it was worse than none.

The ghost seemed to think it a great joke that one not dead should be
among them, and many witticisms were launched at him on account of his
too evident curiosity. The good-natured ghost told him that he probably
would not get much nourishment out of what they gave him, and that he
was very sorry that he could not offer him something to take home to the
children, as was the custom when he was young. He told how he cried when
his parents went anywhere and failed to bring him home some of the good
things they had had at the party. The young man answered in the same
strain and said that he was not hungry, and even if he were the feast of
reason and flow of soul would more than satisfy him.

While the guests were eating, the young stranger within their gates was
observing with great interest everything about him. There was quite as
wide a difference in the way the ghosts acted as among the living, and
he saw some shoveling the food into their fleshless jaws with knives. He
remarked that some who ate with their knives tried to give something of
grace to the movement by turning the blade outward, and these ghosts
held their spoons with the points to the mouths and to render this more
elegant they stuck one li

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