Just as the reporter was going out of the room he noticed a man hobbling along in the most painful manner. The upper portion of his body was of enormous proportions. Even the big gambler would have appeared dwarfed beside this man. But, large as he was, he seemed somehow to be unaccountably dwarfed, and the commendable curiosity belonging to newspaper men caused him to try and discover the meaning of this state of affairs.
As the man came hobbling along he tripped and would have fallen had not the young man caught him in his arms and held him up. The young man sustained him to a seat, and as he sank down in it he asked the ghost if there was anything else he could do, or be of any further assistance. The man, with the remarkable frankness that seemed to be a part and parcel of everything down here, replied:
“No, nobody can't do nothing for me. It was all done when I was moved. And it was done up good and brown too. Nobody can't now make my legs whole again; no, not if they tried forever and forever. It is a shame, that is just what it is!”
“Would you mind telling me what it is that has happened to you? I am sure it must be something unusual, and if I can help you I need not say how gladly I would try.”
“No; you can’t help me, nor nobody else can't. But if you like I will tell you about it and maybe someone else may be spared if you put a piece in the paper about it.”
This caused the reporter to break out in a cold sweat, for he now felt almost afraid to think. The ghost resumed:
“I don't believe that nobody cares about us when we are once dead. I died and was buried in a vault under the old church that stands somewhere in Amity Street or close by. It may be gone now for all I know, for I haven't been there for a long time, and I don’t care if the old shebang is torn down, for it is to that that I owe my misery. Just look at me! I was a giant in my life, and stood seven feet in my stockings and was big according. But, when my time came I was sick and died like the weakest critter of them all. My folks paid the seven dollars to have me put into the receiving vault like the rest. I was pretty comfortable for the first year. The rule was that when new corpuses came in they must be put into the receiving vault the first year. Afterwards they were put into the back vault to make room for the new comers. There was shelves in the first one, and nobody couldn't crowd his neighbors, but in the back vault he was laid just one coffin on top of another, and nothing between them. At one time there was over five thousand corpuses under the church, but hardly anybody knew it.
“The most of the coffins was old what was in the back vault, specially the lower line, and often when a new fellow was put in on top of the other lot the old coffins would mash down to nothing, and nothing of the body would be left, but the bones, and you can just guess how that squeezed. They kept on piling more and more until even with the crumbling old coffins there was no more room. Then the trustees or whoever it was that had the say, decided that we must all be moved to York Bay, and they set about moving us.”
The reporter was deeply interested in this, and followed every word with the greatest care, for if it turned out to be true after he should be in a position to verify it, he intended to write it up for the benefit of humanity. The ghost accepted the chair which the young man brought him and continued his story.
The mended ghost.
“Them trustees thought that the sooner the job was done and the quieter they was about it the better it would be, and there was a whole bunch of fellows come to do it. They busted all the coffins what wasn't already busted, and they threw them into one heap, tore out all the linings, and took off the shrouds, that was left, and they threw them into one heap to sell for old rags. And all the plates and handles was took along with the rest. Then they brought a lot of common pine boxes. All the corpuses what wasn't claimed by the folks related to the corpus was just chucked into them, sometimes three and more in one. When they got three or four into one box and the lid wouldn't shut, they jumped on the top or jammed the bones down till it did. One woman had all her ribs broken and several others had their breastbones stove in to get enough of them into one box. There was one box fixed for three, and they chucked me in that head foremost. There was not half room enough, so my legs stuck out over two feet, and to make me fit in what did them dumb fools do but take a spade and just naturally chop off my feet right in the middle of the legs, and threw them in, and that is how I am in this fix. I tied them up the best I could, but to get a purchase I had to lap them as you see. They don’t feel solid. I expect to fall down every step I take. See how I had to fix them.”
As he said this, the poor giant, shorn not of his strength but of his length, stuck out his offending feet. Surely enough they were chopped off as he said, for the marks of the sharp spade were still visible. The two ends of the bones to each leg had been, as he said, spliced by sliding them past each other and then tying them in place. They lapped at least twelve inches and that cut the man's stature down two whole feet. The worst feature about it was that the parts were not, and could not be made solid enough to make locomotion safe or comfortable.
“If ever I get out of here alive,” thought the reporter, “I shall make it impossible for folks to kick me around like that. I shall have it fixed so that my body will be cremated and the ashes hidden so that nobody can ever find them. Then he spoke:
“Your case is certainly a hard one, and I am surprised that the board of health ever allowed such things. Surely they must have known of it.”
“Do you know, that affair was just the cause of the law that was passed making it necessary to have a Coroner’s inquest on every body, and all the things that them fellows had piled up to sell was took away and burnt. The Police Gazette took and printed pictures about it, and that is the first time that I remember of seeing big headlines, and they was all about ‘the awful desecration of the dead,’ and the trusteeses had to do a lot of things to keep the people from making a fuss. After that they was a little more careful what they done to the bodies, but it was too late to do anything for me. This here affair was in about 1830, 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 little finger out stiffly, while grasping the handle in their bony fingers.
“But you must join us”
One man poured his coffee into his saucer, when the great leader ventured to remind him that in polite society people drank their coffee from the cups, whereupon the offender asked him with some warmth if he set himself up to be better than George Washington, and assured him that the Father of his country poured his coffee and tea out into his saucer, and he suggested that the leader go back to his beautiful society, and see if they did not do things that no self-respecting ghost would do, or even dream of condescending to do. Then the other ghosts took it up and the feeling ran so high that it almost resulted in throwing the leader from the place. Then one peace-loving ghost stood up and said:
“My friends, it ill becomes us to quarrel over a matter of such little importance. Not all of us were born in the time of ultra-civilization. Most of us never saw a four-tined fork while alive, and so we were obliged to convey our food to our mouths with our knives. I do not believe it a capital sin. I well remember that I was once at a dinner where there were several clergymen and great men from various walks of life. This very gentleman's grandfather, who now objects to the use of a saucer, used a knife. I know, for in listening to something that was said he forgot and put it into his mouth. The sharp edge was toward his mouth and he cut his lip quite badly and made it bleed. Everybody used their knives then. Tea plates were considered part of every table service from the highest down, and they were set on the table to stand the cups in while the tea or coffee was in the saucer to cool before being drunk. It is good manners for half the world to eat with the fingers, and I cannot see how any person has a right to dictate what anyone shall or shall not do.” The leader stood up and angrily said:
“Of what use is our boasted civilization if we are to live like the beasts of the field?”
“Some of us here doubtless wish that we had lived like the beasts of the field while they had the chance and failed to do so,” replied the former speaker. “Honestly, sir; is there anything you can bring forward to prove that the 'beasts of the field' ever did anything wicked that you can bring against them now? If you do you are wiser than I, and I assure you that I would rather be the most wretched little yellow dog that I know of than be some of the men who hold such exaggerated opinions of their own importance. Such men should have several billions of years allotted to them in which to learn that they knew nothing worth knowing.”
The leader was so angry that he simply could not find words to reply. He glared at the speaker with such haughty and malevolent disdain, that one might have thought that this was some great social function above ground and that he was squelching some upstart with nothing but his millions to recommend him. He stared until the old ghost who had been trying to act as moderator began to show symptoms of a disposition to arise in his might and wipe up the floor with the great little man, so he haughtily turned away.
As soon as this little diversion had passed off, the eating which had been suspended was now renewed with fervor. New beakers of wine were poured out, and drank with gusto. The noise of the fleshless jaws clapping together as they ate was like the patter of hailstones on the roof. It became so loud and insistent that the newspaper man grew so nervous that he could have screamed like a hysterical woman, but he set his teeth and kept quiet.
He desired to enter into conversation with some of the ghosts, as there were many questions—important ones still unanswered. To that end he addressed himself to the old lady who had been trying to learn poker. He asked her if she would have some more wine, but she said:
“No, I thank you, sir; but I should like some of that boned turkey. I always liked turkey, and folks that ever eat of my turkey—roast turkey—for that is how I think a turkey should always be cooked—not that some other ways aren't good for a change that is. I was called a good cook and housekeeper in my day, and it has been my worst trial to see the awful messes my family has had to put up with since I am gone. And, the awful waste, and the dirt in my house. I used to keep them all on pins and needles all the time for fear of dirt, or that a fly would be let in. I never gave one of them a minute's peace. I thought I was doing a notable thing, then, but since I have had time to think it over it has come to me that I might have been a little less exacting. If I had been perhaps my boys would have stayed with me, but they couldn't stand so much nagging. Well, my poor old husband has got the dyspepsia trying to eat such cooking as he has to put up with now. And down here I naturally don't have a chance to cook. I think I could feel reconciled to being dead if I could only cook a meal of victuals once in a while.”
“I don’t ever want to cook, and I'd go plumb crazy distracted if I had to,” said another woman ghost. “I had to cook for my father, five brothers, and all the farm hands, and every one of them with different tastes, and none of them ever satisfied. I nearly died trying to please them all. I used to get so tired that I wanted to die long before I did. Then a man asked me to marry him, and I thought it would be easier to please one man alone than all the sixteen, and I took him. You ought to have seen the way my folks went on! You just ought to have seen it! You would think I had committed an unpardonable sin, but it was done and I must confess that I am glad at the way they have to live now. Father hired many housekeepers, one after another, and when he found one that could really cook he married her. As soon as she was mistress she wouldn't lift her hand to cook a meal, and my brothers all died. Some of them have told me when they saw me here that they were awful sorry, and wished they could undo it all. But, my husband was worse than all the others combined. I just couldn't tell all he made me suffer. At last I gave up and died in self-preservation. I died to get out of the eternal kitchen.”
“Why, Martha,” said another ghost, “I never knew it was so bad as that. I always thought you cooked because you liked it and was too proud of your faculty to ever let anyone take your place.”
“Well, I didn’t; but I hated worse than all that anyone should know how bad I did hate it. I reckon if we knew all that goes on in our neighbor’s hearts we would have a little more charity. You used to say that I neglected my church duties, and didn't sew for the heathen, and many a tract you left me on the sin of idleness, me what had been up every morning for ten years at four o’clock, and never got to bed till ten and eleven, working every minute all the time. Sometimes I felt like telling you to mind your own business. It is all over now, but I should like to know how much 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, 'just to have a man about the house' she said. As she was one of the cleanest women in the world, she could not bear to see the mold of the Long Island mud on me, and every Saturday I had a bath. She put clean clothes on me, and always did as long as she lived. We both lie now at Kenisco. I hope there will be no removal from there, but you must not blame me if I have lost confidence when it comes to be a question of routing out the dead to make place for the living, if there is money in it.”
