"The regular Railway-Ghosts--I mean
the Ghosts of ordinary Railway-literature--are very poor affairs.
I feel inclined to say, with Alexander Selkirk, 'Their tameness is
shocking to me'! And they never do any Midnight Murders.
They couldn't 'welter in gore,' to save their lives!"
"'Weltering in gore' is a very expressive phrase, certainly.
Can it be done in any fluid, I wonder?"
"I think not," the lady readily replied--quite as if she had thought
it out, long ago. "It has to be something thick. For instance, you
might welter in bread-sauce. That, being white, would be more suitable
for a Ghost, supposing it wished to welter!"
"You have a real good terrifying Ghost in that book?" I hinted.
"How could you guess?" she exclaimed with the most engaging frankness,
and placed the volume in my hands. I opened it eagerly, with a not
unpleasant thrill like what a good ghost-story gives one) at the
'uncanny' coincidence of my having so unexpectedly divined the subject
of her studies.
It was a book of Domestic Cookery, open at the article Bread Sauce.'
I returned the book, looking, I suppose, a little blank, as the lady
laughed merrily at my discomfiture. "It's far more exciting than some
of the modern ghosts, I assure you! Now there was a Ghost last
month--I don't mean a real Ghost in in Supernature--but in a
Magazine. It was a perfectly flavourless Ghost. It wouldn't have
frightened a mouse! It wasn't a Ghost that one would even offer a chair
to!"
"Three score years and ten, baldness, and spectacles, have their
advantages after all!", I said to myself.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53