In New England the tavern was often the chosen place of abode and of visitation of spirits ; like other travellers on life's weary round, these travellers on the round of the dead found their warmest welcome at an inn. Naturally new conditions developed new phenomena; the spirits of unhappy peasants, of cruel barons, of hated heirs at law, of lovelorn ladies, found novel companions, among whom the manitous and wraiths of the red men cut the strangest figure. The ghosts of pirates, too, were prime

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favorites in America, especially in seaboard towns, but were never such frequent visitors, nor on the whole such picturesque visitors, as were the spirits of Indians: -

"The ghosts that come to haunt us From the kingdom of Ponemah, From the land of the Hereafter."

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chapmen, pedlers, or traders who had been over the route frequently, and had heard the tale at every trip, sometimes objected to sleeping in the room - not that they were afraid - but it was somewhat of a nuisance.

It was not known that any Indian ever had received aught of injury at the hands of any at the Black Horse Tavern, save the derivative injury from too frequent and liberal draughts of hard cider, which was freely dealt out to every sorry brave who wandered there. There were some simpletons who said that the Indian's visits were to resent the injury done to another old inn, a rival down the road, named The Pine Tree, but which bore the figure of an Indian on its sign-board, and was oftener known as The Indian Tavern. This was nonsense. The Pine Tree had no visitors because it did not deserve them, had a vile table and a worse stable, while the Black Horse Tavern gave the best of the earth to its guests.

Reuben Jencks had not been born in this tavern. He inherited it from an uncle, and he was already married and had a family of small children when the tavern came to him. Another baby was born soon after, and as the Indian Chamber was the largest in the house, Mrs. Jencks quietly disposed of the objections of timid and superstitious chapmen and pedlers by taking the room for her own sleeping apartment.

It would seem to be a brave warrior, albeit a savage and a ghost, who would enter a room as densely populated as that of Mr. and Mrs. Jencks.

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He was, in one sense, a thoroughly satisfactory apparition, being suitably dad in full "trappings of war, buckskin and turkey feathers, bear's teeth and painty he was none of those miserable half-breed travesties of Indians who sometimes still sneaked round to the tavern kitchen, clad in vile clothes of

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civilization, so greasy and worn and dirty that a blanket would have been as stately in comparison as a Roman toga ; Indians devoid of bravery, dignity, and even of cunning, whose laziness, high cheekbones, and hair coarse as a horse's tail, and their unvarying love of rum, were the only proofs of Indian blood; whose skin, even, had turned from copper tawny to dingy yellow.

To Mrs. Jencks, reposing in state among her abundant goose feathers on the high bedstead, came one night the spectre in her dreams, pulled oft her nightcap, seized her by her long hair, dragged her downstairs and out of doors, pointed fiercely to the roots of the great cedar at the gate, muttering all the while in broken English of avenging an insult to his race. As Mrs. Jencks awoke wholly uninjured, she merely laughed at her vision, saying that all the talk she had heard had made her dream it. But when she had dreamt it three times, three nights running, and the ghost kept speaking of an act of insult to him, that it must be avenged, removed, etc., and kept ever pointing to the base of the cedar tree, Ben Jencks insisted on digging for what he felt sure was hidden treasure. He and his menials dug deep and dug wide, and nearly killed the splendid old cedar, but found nothing. The next time the ghost appeared he dragged the astral body of Mrs. Jencks down to the other cedar tree on the right-hand side of the gateway. Ben Jencks dug again with the same result. Neither he nor the ghost was daunted, and a fine apple tree in the garden next the orchard was the

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next victim. It. was a Sapson apple tree, the variety which all the children loved, and it ceased bearing for several years. As it wilted and pined after the rough spading at its roots, Mrs, Jencks doggedly vowed never to repeat any of the ghost's lies again.

We must not be too contemptuous of this unprincipled Indian spirit. He simply belonged to a class of ghosts of whom. Andrew Lang says complainingly that they have a passion for pointing out places and saying treasure or skeletons are buried therein; whereas it always proves that nothing of the sort is ever found. There are liars among the living as well as of the dead, and Mrs. Jencks's Indian never said it was a treasure - he only hinted darkly at the buried thing being associated with some degradation or insult to the Indian race. The treasure was all in Ben Jencks's brain - and the brains of his friends. Mrs. Jencks's silence to her husband did not prevent her however from having several treasure-hunts alone by herself, after the Indian's renewed visits and pointing finger, for he changed nothing in his programme save the spot he indicated. She spent an entire day pulling and poking

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among the attic rafters, She rolled out several empty cider barrels from a distant cellar corner, and even dug a hole there secretly. Her husband at last discovered her mysteriously poking a hole down a disused well, and promptly had the well cleaned out; but. of course nothing was found save the usual well contents, and thus the years rolled on.

One morning Lucy Jencks whimpered that the Indian had pulled her out of bed in the night and pointed out to her where to hunt, Lucy was nearly eleven years old; a clever, sharp, active little Yankee, who helped to shell peas and string beans and scour pewter, and who could knit famously and spin pretty well. This brought, her naturally in the company of her elders, and she proved the influence of the ghost talk she had heard by repeating the Indian's words that "the derision of his ancient race, the degradation of his ancient customs, must be avenged." Derision and degradation are too big words for a little girl to use untutored, or for an Indian ghost either; and in truth they were not the precise words he had spoken at first. But Parson Pillsbury had been present at the digging under the Sapson apple tree, a piously sceptical but secretly interested spectator, and he had thus explained the somewhat broken "Injun-talk" which Mrs. Jencks reported. It proves the tractability and intelligence of this ghost of a heathen that he ever after used the words of the Puritan minister.

The ghost pointed out to Lucy Jencks a very inaccessible spot to be searched. It was the farther end of a loft over a shed, and had to be entered by

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a short ladder from a leanto. This loft was packed solidly with the accumulated debris of three-quarters of a century, portions of farm tools, poor old furniture, boxes, barrels, every old stuff and piece that was too mean even for the main attic, in which were poor enough relics. It had never been searched or sorted out since Ben Jencks came to the tavern, and I doubt whether Mrs. Jencks -would have listened to a ransacking then but for one circumstance, the Jencks family were going to leave the Black House Tavern - and they really ought to know exactly what was in it ere they sold it with its contents. They had not been driven from the family home by this Indian spirit of dreams, but by a more powerful spirit - that of emigration. Neighbors and friends in Rutland and Worcester were going to Ohio - that strange new territory, and they would go too. A single dead Indian, and such a liar, too, seemed of but little account when they thought of the infinite bands of very live Indians in their chosen home.

Mrs. Jencks and Lucy climbed the ladder to the loft, opened the single shutter, and let in a narrow dancing ray of dusty sunlight on the crowded desolation within. Lucy pointed between bars and barrels and bags, with slender white finger, at a large and remote box which a slender, strong, copper-colored hand had pointed out to her in her dreams. Her mother sternly sent her below to do her stent at quilt-piecing, and she tearfully and unwillingly descended. It was nearly an hour ere the strong arms of Mrs. Jencks had dislodged and repacked the unutterable chaos to the extent of reaching the box.

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Clouds of dust dimmed the air. She untied and removed a rotten rope that bound the box, which even in the dim litter looked like the upper half of a coffin. Within lay something swathed in linen bands and strips of old flannel - newspapers were

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of Perseverance singing a hymn. Perseverance Abbott was the " help," the sister of a farmer neighbor, and she was baking " rye and Injun " bread for the teamsters who would stop there at nightfall, Mrs. Jencks called down, "Persy, come here a minute!" "I'll tell her to come,'' piped up the shrill voice of Lucy, who was hovering at the base of the ladder and evidently meant to be "in at the death." Perseverance appeared, floury and serene, at the foot of the ladder. " I'll come," she said, in answer to Mrs. Jencks's appeal for assistance, " because I know you're scairt, and. I ain't a-goin' to see Ben Jencks a-huntin for them Indian bones again. I've been dyin', anyway, to clear this out ever since I come here, an' this'll be the beginnin'." " Persy," said Mrs. Jencks, hesitatingly, "it seems to be something dead." "Dead!" answered her handmaid, "I'll bet it's dead after layin' here forty, perhaps a hundred year! " An atmosphere of good sense and fearlessness seemed to halo her about; still both women unwrapped the heavy thing, the mummy, with care. A bare shining scalp came first to view. " It's a wig-block," shouted Perseverance in a moment, "yes, and here's curling irons and wire wig-springs."

It was "grandpa's wig-block," so Reuben Jencks said, when he saw it later; his grandfather had added to his duties of tavern-keeper, roadmaster, selectman, and deacon, that of wig-maker. And in that day, when all men of any station wore handsome flowing wigs, and all, even poor men, wore wigs of some kind, it was a calling of importance-

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There is a fine old brick tavern still standing in a New England seaboard town, and now doing service as a rather disreputable road house. It is a building rigidly square, set due north, south, east, and west, with four long, narrow doors opening over broad door-stones to the four ends of the earth. A long tail of sumer and winter kitchens, a wash-room, brew-house, smoke-house, wood-rooms, sheds,

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barns, piggeries, pigeon-houses, hen-houses, once stretched a hundred feet or more adown the road, part of which is now torn down. Each joint of the tail helped loyally in olden times to furnish good cheer to the traveller. The great square rooms of the main house are amply furnished; one was a taproom, and in each second-story room still are two double beds, save in the corner room next the kitchen tail of the house, where stands nailed firmly to the floor of the room a somewhat battered oaken table. A little open staircase in the corner of this room leads down to the working end of the house, and was used in olden days to carry supplies to the upper table from the lower kitchen.

It has been many a year since good cheer was spread on that broad oaken board, though at one time it was the favorite dining place of a choice brotherhood of old salts, called the Mariners' Club, who gathered there when on shore to tell tales of wild privateering, and of sharp foreign trade, and to plan new and profitable ventures. Many of these Mariners' Clubs and Marine Societies existed in seaport towns at that golden time in New England's marine commercial history.

This room was the scene about seventy-five years ago of a somewhat unusual expression of feminine revolt-that is, both the expression and the revolt were unusual. One of the most constant frequenters of the tavern, the heaviest eater and deepest drinker, the greatest money-spender at these Mariners' dinners, was one Captain Sam Blood, who ran a large coasting brig, which made but short

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trips to Atlantic seaports. Thus he was ever on hand for tavern fun. He had a large and rather helpless family which he kept somewhat in retreat on a gloomy farm two miles inland; his mother old and feeble, yet ever hard-working; a large number of untidy children, and, worst of all, a sickly wife, a tall, gaunt woman who whined, and whined, and ever whined from her patch-covered couch, over the frequent desertions of her spouse to the tavern-table, and his wilful waste of money, while she could never leave the house. One night a specially good dinner was set in the Mariners' room, roast and boiled meats, pies and puddings, a grand array of full pitchers, decanters, and bottles; the assembled group of old salts were about to ascend from the taproom to seat them-selves comfortably at the round table for solid work, when a terrible crash and scream were heard, each seeming louder than the other, and before the startled eyes of the landlord and his guests, on a gloomy farm two miles inland; his mother old and feeble, yet ever a large number of untidy children, and, worst: of all, a sickly wife, a tall, gaunt woman who whined, and whined, and ever whined from her patch-covered couch, over the frequent desertions of her spouse to the tavern-table, and his wilful waste of money, while she could never leave the house. One night a specially good dinner was set in the Mariners' room, roast and boiled meats, pies and puddings, a grand, array of full pitchers, decanters, andbottles; the assembled group of old salts were about to ascend from the taproom to sear themselves comfortably at the round table for solid work, when a terrible crash and scream were heard, each seeming; louder than the other, and before the startled eyes of the landlord and his guests

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as they rushed up and into the room, there were all the steaming dishes, all the streaming bottles, with table-cloth and plates in a disorderly hopeless wreck on the floor. "Who could have done it?" "There he goes," shouted one captain, as eh ran to the window; and, surely enough, a slender man in nautical garb was seen striking out from under the sheltering walls of the ell-kitchens and sheds, and running desperately across the snowy fields. Full chase was given and the maruauder finally captured; he as swung roughly around with oaths and blows, when sudden silence fell on all. It was Sam Blood's wife in Sam Blood's togs. "I'll settle for this dinner," said Sam Blood blackly.

On his next voyage Mrs. Blood sailed with the captain. With the usual ethical inconsistencies which prevail in small communities, Mrs. Sam Blood the despoiler attracted more attention and sympathy than Mrs. Sam Blood the poor, hard-working, sickly wife; it was the universal talk and decision of all the women in town that the captain's wife needed a change of scene; and she had to take it in that ironical form decreed to the wives of old-time ship-owners, in a voyage of uncertain length and certain discomfort on a sailing vessel, with no woman companion and the doubtful welcome of the male members of the crew. Off she went to Savanah. At that port she was no better, cried all the time (the first mate wrote home), and seemed little like the woman of spirit who had wrecked the Mariner's dinner. The captain decided to go with a cargo to South America to see how the tropics would

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serve the ailing woman. His old home crew shipped back to Boston, not caring for the trip far south, and a crew of Creoles and negroes was taken on the supplemental trip.

When Captain Blood and his schooner at last came into port at home, he landed with sombre countenance, a mourning widower, and soon was properly clad in trappings of woe. Mrs. Sam Blood was no more. Her husband stated briefly that she had died and was buried at sea off the island of Jamaica. A discreet and decent term of mourning passed, and Mrs. Blood, as is the way of the living - and of the dead - was quite forgotten. Once more the Mariners' Club was to have a din-ner, and once more the table in the Manners' room was spread with good cheer and ample drink. Captain Blood, in somewhat mitigated bereavement, was among the thronging guests who lingered over a final stomach-warmer at the bar. The landlord ran out of the room and roared down the mam stairs that dinner was ready, and even as he spoke, crash ! smash ! came a din from the Mariners' room, and there was all the dinner and all the broken bottles with the table-cloth and the upset table on the floor. It was a very unpleasant reminder to Sam Blood of a very mortifying event, and his friends sympathized with him in silence. This time no miscreant could be found in house or on farm, but the landlord suspected a discharged and ugly servant, who might have run down the little corner staircase, as Mrs. Blood had before him.

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The ruined dinner was replaced by another a week later. The guests were gathered, the landlord was bearing a last roast pig aloft, when smash ! crash ! came again from the Mariners' room. Every one in the house rushed up in tremendous excitement: the table-cloth was off, table upset, bottles smashed. An ominous silence and a sense of the uncanny fell on ail in the room; some glanced askance at Sam Blood. More than one sharp-eyed old salt noted that the great, hairy, tattooed hands of the widower shook amazingly, though his face was the calmest of all the bronzed, weather-beaten figure-heads staring around.

There has never been a meal served from that table since, though many a meal has been spread on it. The landlord, a stubborn man of no nonsense and no whims, grimly nailed the legs of the table to the floor, and proceeded to set the succeeding dinner on the bare boards. It mattered not, cloth or no cloth, every dinner small or great was always wrecked. Watchers were set, enjoined not to take their eyes from the table, nor themselves from the room. Something always happened, an alarm of fire, a sudden call for help, an apparent summons from the landlord - this but for a single moment, but in that moment smash ! crash ! went the dinner.

Captain Blood lived to a rather lonely and unpopular old age, for he was held responsible for the decay and dissolution of the Mariners' Club ; and unjustly enough, for Neptune knows it was no wish of his. When occasional dinners and suppers were given by nautical men in wholly mundane rooms in

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other taverns, with no spiritual accompaniments, - that is, in the form of ghosts, - the captain was left out. Men did not hanker for the companionship of a man who left port with a wife and came home with a ghost. He has been dead for decades, and is anchored in the old Hill graveyard, where he sleeps the quiet sleep of the righteous; and the

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day of not of old, I really wish I could see the spry and spiteful spirit of Mrs. Sam Blood, with her expression of rampant victory as she twitches the table-cloth off, and wrecks the bottles, and says in triumphal finality, " I'll settle for this dinner"; thus gaining what is ever dear to a woman, even to the ghost of a woman- the last word.

Late on a November night in the early part of this century the landlord and half a dozen teamsters sat drinking deep in the taproom of the Buxton Inn. These rough travellers had driven into the yard during the afternoon with their produce-laden wagons ; for a heavy snow was falling, and it was impossible wheeling, doubtful even whether they could leave the inn in forty-eight hours - perhaps not for a week. Their board would not prove very costly, for they carried their own horse-provender, and much of their own food. Some paid for a bed, others slept free of charge round the fire ; but all spent money for drink. It was a fierce storm and a great fall of snow for the month of the year - though November is none too mild any year in New England. Though this snow was too early by half to be seasonable, yet each teamster was roughly merry at the others' expense that he had not "come down " on runners.

With dull days of inaction before them there was no need for early hours of sleep, so all talked loud and long and drank boisterously, when suddenly a series of heavy knocks was heard at the front door of the inn. Bang! bang ! angrily pounded the iron knocker, and the landlord went slowly into the little

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front entry, fumbled heavily at the bolt, and at last threw open the door to a fine young spark who blustered in with a great bank of snow which fell in at his feet, and who was covered with rolls and drifts of snow, which he shook off" debonairly on all around him, displaying at last a handsome suit of garments, gold-laced, and very fine to those country bumpkins, but which a "cit " would have noted were somewhat antiquated of cut and fashion.

He at once indicated and proved his claim to being a gentleman by swearing roundly at the landlord, declaring that his horses and servant were housed ere he was, that they had driven round and found shelter in the barn before he could get into the front door. He could drink like a gentleman, too, this fine young fellow, and he entered at once into the drinking and singing and story-telling and laughing with as much zest as if he had been only a poor common country clown. At last all fell to casting dice. The stakes were low, but such as they were luck all went one way. After two hours' rounds the gentleman had all the half-dollars and shillings, all the pennies even, in his breeches pocket; and he laughed and sneered in hateful triumph. Sobered by his losses, which were small but his all, one teamster surlily said he was going to sleep, and another added, " 'Tis high time." And indeed it was, for at that moment old Janet, the tavern housemaid, came in to begin her morning round of work, to pinch out the candles, take up part of the ashes from the chimney-hearth, fill the kitchen pots and kettles, gather in the empty bottles and glasses ; and as she

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did so, albeit she was of vast age, she glanced with warm interest at the fine figure of fashion slapping his pockets, sneering, and drinking off his glass. "Why, master," she said, staring, "you do be the very cut of Sir Charles off our sign-board." "Let's see how he looks," swaggered the young blade; "where's a window whence we can peep at him ?" All trooped to a nigh window in the tavern parlor to look at the portrait of Sir Charles Buxton on the

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score for the double bowl of punch and the half-dozen mugs of flip Sir Charles Buxton had ordered while the dicing was going on, and a large share of which he had drunk off with all the -zest of flesh and blood? Besides, Janet had seen him, and Janet's eye for a young man could never be doubted.

I spent one night a few summers ago in a tavern haunted by the ghost of a dead past. A sudden halt in our leisurely progress from town to town, caused by a small but unsurmountable accident to our road-wagon, found us in a little Massachusetts village of few houses. The blacksmith had gone to a neighboring village to spend the night. It was twilight, and we decided not to attempt to reach our intended place for sojourning, six miles distant. We asked of a passer-by which house was the tavern. "There isn't any," was the cheerful answer; "if you stay here over night you'll have to stay at the poorhouse." Now this was rather an unalluring alternative to any self-respecting citizen, but the night was coming on, and, after vainly searching for some resident who had ever had summer boarders, we determined to investigate the poorhouse. We found it the best house in the village. It was the almshouse, but it had been for half a century a tavern in reality, when the post-road lay through the town and travellers were more frequent than to-day. There was evidence of its tavern days in the old taproom, which had been converted into a store-room. The house with twenty acres of land had been bequeathed to the town by one of the old Bourne family that had. lived in it so long. This last Bourne owner was a

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childless widower, a St. Louis man, who had been away from the home of his youth since early childhood and had little love of it from old associations. The poormaster and his wife we found to be tidy, respectable folk, even folk of a certain dignity, who

Now both are married to American wives and own prosperous cranberry bogs of their own. The poor-house had its usual quota on the night of our sojourn; we found two paupers living there.

There was not time to prepare an extra meal of extra quality for the travellers who came so suddenly for a night's shelter, but the good tea, plentiful milk, fine bread and butter, honey, hot griddle-cakes, and fried bacon bore testimony of ample fare and good housewifery. The two paupers sat at the table and ate with us - a silver-haired old man of exquisite cleanliness, and a grotesque little humpback. We noted that the old man was ever addressed by all who spoke to him as Mr. Bourne, and during his short absence from the room after supper the poor-mistress told us that the almshouse had been the home and this the farm of his grandfather. The supper was served in the great kitchen, and here we sat till a curfew bell rang from the little church belfry at nine o'clock.

Considerable jealousy was shown by both paupers in their eager desire to talk with us, and we learned that the dwarf was regarded as a genius; he composed wonderful epitaphs, and had written poetry for the county newspaper. He could set type, and could thus earn his living, but was temporarily more feeble than usual, on account of a weight falling on his back; after a few months he would go to work again. He represented the brilliant and intellectual element of communal life, but was hopelessly plebeian; while Mr. Bourne stood for blood and breeding. This the dwarf Peter scorned, being a Socialist

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It was in the middle of this night that the experiencecame to me of the greatest sense of passive comfort that I have known - and think of the absurdity, in a poor-house! We heard at midnight a light patter of quick rain, and soon soft footsteps entered and our window shutters were carefully closed. "It's me," said our landlady, ungrammatically and pleasantly. " I didn't mean to wake you, but I always go to Mr.

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Bourne's room when it rains to close his window for fear he'll take cold, so I looked at yours," and the old-time figure in petticoat, shawl, and ruffled nightcap withdrew as quietly as it had entered. Then came the hour of half-sleep, a true "dozy hour," as Thackeray said. In this poorhouse, with no bok, no ready light, I fain must lie in silence, hence an hour such as has been told in perfection in a simple yet finished piece of descriptive English; let me give the classic prose of Sam Pepys - the words are his - but the happy hour was mine as well as his: -

"Rode easily to Welling, where we supped well, and had two beds in the room, and so lay single, and still remember it that of all the nights that I ever slept in my life I never did pass a night with more epicurism of sleep; there being now and then a noise of people stirring that wakened me, and then it was a very rainy night, and then I was a little weary, that what between waking, and then sleeping again one after another, I never had so much con- tent in all my life."

When we awoke the following morning Mr. Bourne was awaiting our coming with some eager- ness. The dwarf was absent and the old man apologized for one or two of Peter's remarks the night before which had seemed to him uncivil. These were, however, only some of Peter's mild bitternesses about division of property, the injustice of modern laws, the inequalities of taxation, etc., which had seemed harmless enough in the mouth of a pauper.

While waiting he leisurely repairs of our vehicle

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at the hands of the captured blacksmith, I yielded to Mr. Bourne's eager invitation to come with him to see a piece of land he owned. " It's been in the family near two hundred years," he said proudly. "Peter says I ought to be ashamed to tell of my folks' grasping all them years God's gift of the soil that ought to be just as free as the ocean and the sky; but I'm glad I've got it. Peter's folks came from Middleboro way, and never did own no land nor nothin', and I've noticed it's them sort that's always maddest at folks as does have family things." After a few minutes of silence he added : " Peter can't help it. It's born in him to feel that way, just as it's born into me to feel proud of my property." We walked along the sandy road under the beautiful autumnal sky. A dense group of stunted cedars and one towering fir tree rose sombrely in a little enclosed corner below the church. "This is my property," said the old man, cheerfully, "and they're all Bournes and Swifts in it. There lies my great-grandfather, the old parson, under that flat stone come from England. Here is my mother. That slate headstone over there is for my brother lost at sea on one of his voyages. I am going to be put exactly here. Them four stones I put to mark it. And Peter hasn't any graveyard - don't even know where his father is buried - so he's going to lie over here in this corner. He's the only one as ain't a Swift or a Bourne, and it's a great honor to him. He's had to pay me for it, though ; he's written me an epitaph, and it's a good one; it'll be the best one in the whole graveyard."