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ch good has all your sewing for the heathen done you
towards getting your passport? As you know the truth now, Melissy, which
would you rather be: the enlightened Christian with the responsibility
of knowledge of good and evil, or the ignorant heathen?"

"Yes: I know now, Martha, but I did not then, and now, if it is not too
late, I want to ask your forgiveness."

This last was said with an evident disposition on the part of "Melissy"
to fall upon the bony neck of "Martha" that an unregenerate man said
with a harsh, rasping laugh:

"Forget it, forget it! This is no time to bring up old scores. If it
were so, there are several fellows here tonight that I could lick with a
clear conscience. I don't hold enmity, but I will say that they will do
well not to rouse the sleeping lion."

As this ghost spoke, he turned his face toward two men at a table a
short distance away, and waited to see the effect of his words. As no
one took up the challenge the man sat down again at the table.

The newspaper man looked at this ghost with considerable interest, and
thought that of all the ghosts he was the cleanest. He had noticed this
ghost sitting at a rude table near the door. There was a candle burning
there and an inkstand, and two immense books. The ghost sat balancing a
pen, but was doing no writing. He had noticed him then as his skull and
bones fairly shone, so white and polished they were.

It was not the intention of the young man to ask any impertinent
questions about anything he saw there, but he thought to himself that
when he was alone with the good-natured ghost he would ask him how this
phenomenon had occurred. While he was thinking this, a polished ghost
turned to him and said:

"Young stranger, I notice that you are somewhat interested in me, and
far from feeling hurt at your natural curiosity, I am flattered by it
and if you wish it I will tell you in a few words how it happens that I
am so white after having been so long dead."

The young man felt his blood all mount to his face as he saw that even
his secret thought could not be hidden, and he reflected that if even
these ghosts knew what he thought, how impossible it would be to hide
action or thought from the Master, as the ghosts called the One.

"Ahem! young sir, that is the right feeling. But to resume. I was
married to a very sensible and worthy woman, with no nonsense about her.
She kept her house well, and everything that she could do for my comfort
and happiness she did. I felt very badly to leave her, but once you are
called you must go, and I went. At that time Long Island City was
scarcely more than a hole in the ground, and the church to which I
belonged found that it would soon become necessary to remove from New
York City, so they purchased a plot of ground quite in the outskirts of
the former named place. I was laid in the old churchyard until they
should be ready to remove us all. We were finally taken over there and
put into the meanest kind of ground, all soaked with tidewater and the
refuse of ages, which had been swept there by the tides until it grew to
what no one with any regard for the truth would call solid ground. It is
unhealthy even for a dead man.

 "Forget it, forget it!"

"Well, there was a sudden rush for that place for its commercial value,
and if I remember rightly I laid about where the big sugar refinery now
stands. But it may have been a little further along, for I had the
chills so bad during all this time that it is not to be wondered at if I
am a bit hazy as to the exact location. We were all glad when we were
moved from that place to one further from the shore. This was really a
comfortable graveyard, but somebody wanted this place, too, and we found
that we had congratulated ourselves too soon, and we were informed that
we were to be moved again.

"In those days the best coffins were made of solid mahogany, and the
longer that remains in the ground the more solid it grows. Several years
had passed, perhaps thirty, and when we were moved many of the cheaper
coffins had crumbled to nothing. It was not an easy job to arrange for
these bodies, for this removal was so long after the burial that there
were no friends left to see to it, and the church had to bear the
expenses, and we who are dead know what that means."

As the polished ghost said this, there was a long drawn sigh from the
whole assemblage that set all the lights flickering. He continued, sadly
and solemnly:

"I will not dwell on the inconvenience of that removal, though I was
left out all night in the rain. Still no one was to blame for that. Some
of those whose coffins were of poor wood got very wet and some of them
have had rheumatism ever since. Ghostly rheumatism, you know.

"At last we were put into another cemetery in Williamsburg, another most
unhealthy place for ghosts. None of us felt at home there. We began to
expect another removal as this place was building up rapidly, and we
used to talk it over and hope that when we were moved again we should be
put so far out on the Island that no one would ever want the land.

"It came upon us after all like a shock when we heard that we were to
move on again, like Jo in Bleak House. Whatever old coffin had held
together before now fell apart. My coffin was of mahogany, but in the
last removal somehow, half of the lid was knocked off, and one from some
other coffin was put in its place. Naturally that did not last as long
as my own cover, and so when the coffins were all laid out for the final
removal I felt how very frail and rotten this one was, and was in great
fear that some incautious movement would cause it to crumble. I do not
know why it is that coffins have that faculty of crumbling away to dust.
I never noticed any other wood that did it. However, all who had any
living relatives were properly removed, but those who had none had to go
the way of friendless ghosts, and there were things said and done that
would have caused trouble had there been anyone capable of objecting.

"My wife came and insisted that my coffin should be opened, but it was
against the rule, for the sexton who had care of the removals had taken
extra care that all should be done so that there would be no difficulty
in identifying the bodies in case of need. My coffin therefore was all
right, save for the lid; but she would not accept it on that account
unless she could be permitted to open it. That they would not do.

"She tried every way to get them to consent, but the Board of Health had
made the law so, and what do you think she did? She sent the men off on
an errand, and took a spade that was lying near and pried the lid off so
that she could see me, and when the men came running back, she said:
'That's him. I would know his head anywhere, it was so long.' She was so
glad that she had outwitted the authorities that she did not complain
about the lid. But she was tired of moving me around, and so had me
taken home where I had lived and died, and there she kept me all these
years, 

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