from the grave which fancy had dug for me; and they buried me in the
thronged cemetery of a town, where my marble slab stands unnoticed amid
a hundred others. And there are coffins on each side of mine!

"Alas, poor ghost!" will the reader say. Yet I am a happy ghost enough,
and disposed to be contented with my grave, if the sexton will but let
it be my own, and bring no other dead man to dispute my title. Earth
has left few stains upon me, and it will be but a short time that I need
haunt the place. It is good to die in early youth. Had I lived out
threescore years and ten, or half of them, my spirit would have been so
earth-incrusted, that centuries might not have purified it for a better
home than the dark precincts of the grave. Meantime, there is good
choice of company amongst us. From twilight till near sunrise, we are
gliding to and fro, some in the graveyard, others miles away; and would
we speak with any friend, we do but knock against his tombstone, and
pronounce the name engraved on it: in an instant, there the shadow
stands!

Some are ghosts of considerable antiquity. There is an old man,
hereabout; he never had a tombstone, and is often puzzled to distinguish
his own grave; but hereabouts he haunts, and long is doomed to haunt.
He was a miser in his lifetime, and buried a strong box of ill-gotten
gold, almost fresh from the mint, in the coinage of William and Mary.
Scarcely was it safe, when the sexton buried the old man and his secret
with him. I could point out the place where the treasure lies; it was
at the bottom of the miser's garden; but a paved thoroughfare now passes
beside the spot, and the cornerstone of a market-house presses right
down upon it. Had the workmen dug six inches deeper, they would have
found the hoard. Now thither must this poor old miser go, whether in
starlight, moonshine, or pitch darkness, and brood above his worthless