sight of an extraordinary object—visible,
materially visible to his optic nerves, and to the eyes,
which may be called their windows.

There was no doubt about it at all—he saw, or
thought he saw, distinctly, TWO SKELETONS sitting
and warming their shins in front of his stove
door. One must be his laboratory skeleton, for
it had the well-known black bullet-mark on the
left temple; but the other was a perfect stranger.
The one sat with legs stretched foppishily out,
and his long right arm hung over the chair-back;
the other cowered over the fire and rubbed his
knees, which the fire reflexion turned to
luminous crimson.

But the doctor was a brave man, and not a
superstitious one. He had done his best, too,
to expose the folly of table-rapping, and of the
stuffed hands and lazy tongs, and all the rest
of it. He did not, therefore, believe what he
saw, but attributed it at once to a natural
cause. All he said was, as he rose and pointed
at the skeletons, these simple words of
common sense:

"Diseased state of my retina."

Here the Polish ghost rose, and introduced
his friend with a wave of the hand as "the Guy's
Hospital skeleton."

Now, I may as well here premise that I am
not myself answerable for the exact truth of what
the skeleton said, as the doctor could never
make up his mind afterwards whether the
skeletons actually spoke, or whether the replies
apparently addressed to him by those strange
apparitions were not rather replies made by his
inner consciousness to his own questions.

"Binocular deception—occasioned by temporary
vinous affection of the optic nerve—very
common after dinner."

At this moment, the Polish ghost coughed in
the impatient way in which people do who wish
to edge a word in.

The Professor continued in a contemptuous
tone, feeling his pulse deliberately as he spoke,
and making a note on his blotting pad of its
condition "at 15 minutes past one, Thursday,
February 15, 1862:"

"The blood heated; the nervous system by
some subtle cause thrown off its balance—brain
locally excited in the organ of caution—it's all
that infernal champagne of Mrs. Fitz-Jones's
—that's it-  a species of waking nightmare."
Here the Professor threw himself unconsciously
into a lecturing attitude, and struck the table
with a heavy ruler.

The ghost getting rather impatient and a
little nettled, advanced to the table, and putting
one hand on his hips oratorically, stretched
the other deprecatingly towards the Professor,
whose courage increased every minute the more
scientifically heated he got.

"Just one moment," said the ghost, "if I
may be permitted by my friend from Guy's."

"I have devoted much time to these cases,"
said the Professor (he was one of those men
you constantly meet, who have always
"devoted much time," to whatever subject you are
discussing), "and I know all the precedents;
they are all classified; there was Dr. Ferriar,
and Monsieur Nicolai, the celebrated bookseller
of Berlin."

"I often meet him," said the ghost.

"About the year 1791," said the Professor,
treading down all interruptions, " Nicolai began
to be visited by crowds of ghosts."

"I was one of them," said the Polish ghost.
The skeleton from Guy's nodded, and bleared
through a quite superfluous eye-glass, to
indicate that he was another.

"Crowds of phantasmata," continued Gaster,
"who moved and acted before him, who
addressed him, and to whom without fear he
spoke: knowing that they were mere symptoms
of a certain derangement of health, such as
suicidal feelings, and indeed all melancholy, arises
from.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the ghost,
entreating silence, and actually winking slyly at
the Professor.

"Silence, sir! You are a mere phantom, the
result of hectic symptoms, febrile and inflammatory
disorders, inflammation of the brain, nervous
irritability, hypochondria, gout, apoplexy, the
inhalation of gases, or delirium tremens. Go!
You are the mere offspring of a morbid
sensibility, and only fools and sceptics have any
belief in you!"

"But one word."

"Not a word; I know all your relations; there
is Dr. Gregory's old hag, who used to strike
people with her crutch."

"My grandmother on my father's side," said
the ghost, consequentially. "Mother Shipton
was my aunt."

"Sorry for it, for she was no great things.
I've seen too many ghosts, sir, as some great
person once said, ever to believe in them—a
pack of rubbish. The man who believes in
a ghost, I tell you, ought to be sent to a
hospital."

The quiet dittoing ghost suggested "Guy's,"
and smiled.

"I know the ghost in the tamboured waistcoat,
and the skeleton that looked between the
bed-curtains and frightened the doctor," said the
Professor.

"Daren't look behind you, though!" said
the Polish ghost, in a nagging and malicious
way.

At this sneer the ghost from Guy's rubbed his
knees harder than ever, and laughed till he
rocked again.

"Daren't I," said the doctor, and turned
quietly round; then, snapping back again, and
catching the gentleman from Poland sliding
forward to try and pull his coat and frighten him, he
deliberately snatched up his heavy ruler, and hit
the Pole a rattling blow on his bare skull; at
which the Pole grew angry, and the friend from
Guy's laughed more than ever.

"How about Maupertui's ghost? That's a
settler, I think," said the Pole, stepping back
to a safe distance from the table, and thrusting
in the remark spitefully.

"The mere fancy of a possible event.