Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Booknothing even to the widows. Now, of course, I have no means of knowing much about these matters, but it seems to me to be an outrage if it is true. I used to write poetry on shipboard, at night, and I am sure that I should not have liked this sort of treatment, if it is true." "Some of them are several times meaner than any you have mentioned. But, show them to me if you please," said the reporter, who had a bone to pick with two or three dead publishers. "I will. I am sorry for poor Bradford, for they have gone and restored his whole epitaph. He was good to me when I first came down and kindly taught me the rules. It is a bit rough until you have learned the ropes after you are dead." "Will you excuse me if I ask you a question? I have always been led to think that those who are dead dislike to hear the word dead. They are supposed to prefer to hear, 'passed into spirit life' and 'gone to Summerland' instead. All the mediums use that word, in palliation and instead of the harsher one. Dead, gives one a shock to hear," asked the young man in a laudable desire to learn all he could. "Poppycock and moonshine!" was the unexpected response. "There is no such thing as a medium. No, sir; they get your money and-do you suppose that one of them could get you the invitation to come down here tonight? You are soon to enter the very doors of ghostdom, but not through the efforts of any medium. No, sir; they trade upon your sense of loss and sorrow when anyone of yours dies, and they foster and encourage your desire to penetrate the mystery of the future life. They get your money by fraud, working upon your best sentiments. They ought to be keelhauled, and should be if I had my way. I'd string them to the yardarm and whack them with a rope's end. If the tie that bound you to anyone you loved is broken by death there is no third party that can come and for a certain sum in cash become the medium of communication between you, and I say, lick the man that tells you different. You are getting this straight from a real ghost. In my warmth I had almost forgotten that you asked if we who are dead dislike to hear anyone say the word Dead. Quite the contrary, for we are dead and it would be very silly to try to disguise the fact, and we do not try to down here. Fact is truth and truth governs down here. Dead we are and dead we stay, and after all I am not sure that we are not quite as well, and sometimes better off, than when alive. If we miss some things we escape others. Well, come on; but before we go let me say that the Trinity ghosts are the hosts tonight and they feel themselves the most aristocratic ghosts in the land, so I wished to caution you so that you would avoid hurting anyone's feelings by seeming to doubt it." "I shall be very careful, sir, and hope you will be near enough to forewarn me of any possible mistake. I assure you that I appreciate this distinguished honor more than I can say. But, I should like to ask if any of the Vanderbilts will be here tonight?" "No, young man; there will be no Vanderbilts here tonight. But I can tell you something else that may interest you, and that is where old John Jacob Astor is tonight. You have doubtless heard that the old man was a worker from head to foot. Work was ingrained in his thrifty nature. He wandered all over America to buy up fur skins. For a long time he carried them on his back, so we are told, until his business had grown so that he required help, and could afford to pay for it. Even then he would gladly have carried them all, so great was his instinct of thrift. Then, when he found he could not tie them up alone he bought a baling press. This baling press he came to love. It marked for him the very spirit of progress, though it is a clumsy old thing made of beams and iron levers and screws. To this he confided his ambitions and joys and sorrows. So when his year of dormant waiting is over, like ours, and he is at liberty to amuse himself as he wishes for the few hours before the penance begins, The Master lets him choose between this evening of festivity and his own desire. His ghost is now down in the sub-cellar of the great John Ruszits fur company, where the women of four generations have brought their furs. This company was formed in 1851, and Astor died a few years before. The new Ruszits company must have felt a certain friendship for the old man, though there is no record of their ever dining together, for when the old baling press was about to be sold for junk, at auction, with the rest of the effects of the old fur house, they purchased it and had it set up in the sub-cellar and have carefully preserved it ever since. It is about thirty feet below the surface of the street. It is pretty sure that the present members of the family have no desire to keep it as an heirloom. "That is about all of the old man's effects left intact, and he is naturally drawn toward it, and now he is standing there in the pungent odor of raw pelts, and turning that baling press for all he is worth and if ghosts can sweat he is sweating now and enjoying himself in the keenest delight." "I should think he would prefer to spend the evening at the magnificent library which his money gave to the world. That is a noble sight, and I should think he would be glad to get out of the ground for a while." "My young friend, John Jacob Astor, the founder of that family, loved his business better than money. He could not be hired to leave the old press for all the books there is in it. When he is debarred from his present occupation he puts in his time turning over the raw furs in this place and inhaling their pungent odor, familiar and redolent of the old days. The rest of his time he sleeps and takes the repose which his active spirit would not allow him on earth." The young newspaper man thought a little about these things and remembered that only a few days ago he had been in this very warehouse where he had seen so much of beauty and value and yet missed seeing this old baling press, and he rather wondered, too, how anyone could prefer the penetrating odor of raw skins to the fresh air of night under the stars. He could understand how the sight and feel of the soft finished garments might appeal to one, but he only said: "I don't see why the Family should care for a better name and fame than that the old man left-that of an industrious, frugal and honest man-" Before the young man could finish his sentence he became aware of a perfect cloud of shadowy forms, and all seemed to be gathering around him. He began to wish that he had gone for the whiskey and failed to return. His companion sat on the edge of a tombstone from which he had seemed to exude when he first made his appearance. They had returned to that place while talking and as he did so he rubbed his stubbed toe, and for a few minutes no one said or did anything. At last the ghost said in a sibilant whisper: "I think there would be time for one more smoke if you would b |