Well! we tell our host of what we have seen, and a
shade comes over his features, and he begs it may be hushed up; and
so it is. But, it's all true; and we said so, before we died (we
are dead now) to many responsible people.
There is no end to the old houses, with resounding galleries, and
dismal state-bedchambers, and haunted wings shut up for many years,
through which we may ramble, with an agreeable creeping up our back,
and encounter any number of ghosts, but (it is worthy of remark
perhaps) reducible to a very few general types and classes; for,
ghosts have little originality, and "walk" in a beaten track. Thus,
it comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a
certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has
certain planks in the floor from which the blood WILL NOT be taken
out. You may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has done, or
plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub and scrub, as his
grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his great-
grandfather did, but, there the blood will still be--no redder and
no paler--no more and no less--always just the same. Thus, in such
another house there is a haunted door, that never will keep open; or
another door that never will keep shut, or a haunted sound of a
spinning-wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a sigh, or
a horse's tramp, or the rattling of a chain.
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