The daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1848-1851, 1849-01-22
THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOSTS
BARGAIN....A FANCY FOR CHRISTMAS
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPTER I. :. THE GIFT BESTOWED.

Far be 1t from me to assert that what everybody
| says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely
| to be wrong as right. In the general experience
| everybody has been wrong so often, and it has
| taken, in most instances, such weary while to
find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to
be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right ;
| " but that's rule as the ghost of Giles Scrop-
| gins says in the ballad.
The dread word, GHOST, recalls me,
| Everybody said that he looked like haunted
| man. The extent of my present claim for every
| body is, that they were SO far right. He did
Who could have seen his hollow cheek his sunk
en- brilliant eye; his backattired figure, indefnably
grim, although we'll knit and well proportoned his
grlzzled hair hang ing, like tangled sea-weed, about
his face-as if he had been through his whole life
lonely mark for the chatting and beating of the
great deep of humanty-but might have said he
looked like haunted man.
Who could have heard his voice. slow speaking
deep, and grave, with natural fulIness and melody
in it which he seemed to set himself against and
stop, but might have said it was the voice of
haunted man!
Who thai had seen him in his upper chamber
part library and part laboratory he was as the
world knew, far and WIDE learned man in chem
lstry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a
crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily-who
that had seen him there, upon winter night alone
surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books;
the shadow of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle
on the WALL motlonless among crowd of spectral
shapes raised there by the Pickering of the fire upon
the quaint objects around him; some Of these phan-
toms 1.-THE reflection of ass vessels that held iquids)
trembling at heart like things that knew his power
to unc0mblne them, and to give back their compo-
nent parts to tire and vapor who that had seen him
then, his work done, and he bordering in his chair
before the rusted CRATE and red flame, moving his
thin mouth as If IN speech, but silent the dead,
would not have said that the man seemed haunted
and the chamber too!
VINO might not, by very easy flight of fancy,
Va he hat
haunted tone, and that he lived on haunted ground
His dwelling was solitary and vaut-like,-an
old retired part OF an ancient endowment for stu
dents, once brave edifce planted in open place,
but now the obsolete whim of forgotten architects,
smoke-age-and weather darkened squeezed on
every side by the overgrowing of the great city, and
choked, like an old well, with stones, and bricks
lis small quadrangles, lying down in every pits
formed by the streets and buildings, which, in
course OF time, have been constructed above its
heavy chimney stacks its old trees insued by the
nelghboring smoke, which deigned TO droop so low
when II was very feeble and the weather very
moody, Its grassplots, struggling with the mildewed
earth to be grass, or TO win any show of compro-
mise; Its silent pavements, unaccustomed to the
tread OF feet, and even to the observation of eyes,
except when strange face looked down from the
upper world, wondering what nook ii was its sun.
dial In little bricked-up corner where no had
struggled for hundred years, but where, in COM
pensation for the suns neglect, the sun would lie
black east wind would spin like huge humming-
top when in all other nIaces If was slant and still
His dwelling at its heart core-within doors-at
his freside-was so lowering and old. 30 crazy vet
so strong, with its worm-eaten beams of wood in
the ceiling, and its sturdy floor shelving downwards
to the great oak chimney-piece; so environed and
hemmed in by the presence of the town vet 50 re-
mote in fashion. ACE and custom d. 90 onet yet 81
numbering with echoes when distant voice was
raised or a door was shut-echoes. not confined to
the MANY low MESSAGES and EMMY rooms hut rumb.
ling and grnmhIng iii thew were sJ in the heavy
air of the forgotten crvpt where the Norman arches
were half. buried in the earth.
You shoud have seen him in his dwelIinp about
twilight, in the dead winter time.
When the wind was blowing shriII and shrewd.
with the going down of the blnrred SIM. When if
was lust so dark as that The forms of THINGS yyere in
distinct and big but not wholly lost When sitters
bv the fire began TO see wild faces and fpures
mountains and abuses ambuscades and armies in
the Goals. When naonIe in the streets bent down
their heads and ran before the weather When
those who were obliged to meet it. were stopped at
anorv corners stuno bv wandering snow flakes
aghtng on the Iasbes of their ewes which fell too
sparinsy, and were blown away TOO quickly. to
leave a trace upon the frozen ground. when win
dows of private houses closed up tight and warm. |
When lighted gas began TO bnrst forth in the busv
and quiet streets fast blackening otherwise When |
stray pedestrians. shverng along the latter looked
down at the glowing fires in kitchens and sbarn.
ened their s6arp a6petites by shifting M the fra
GRANGE of whole miles of dinners |
When travellers bv land were bitter cold, and |
looked YEARLY on gloomy LANDSCAPES rustling and
shuddering in the blast. When mariners at sea.
outlying nnon lev wards. were tossed and SWING
above the bowling ocean dreadfulIy. When light, |
houses on rocks and headIands showed solitary and
watchfuI: and benighted sea.birds breasted on |
against their ponderous lanterns. and fell dead |
When little readers of storvbooks by the freight,
hanging in the robbers cave. or had some small |
that the fierce little old woman with The
crnich Who nsed 10 start ont of the boy in the mer
chant Abnbab,s bedroom MIGHT one of these NIGHTS |
he found unon the stairs in the long cold dnskv /
Journey nm to he'd
Nhen in rnst;o nIooeS tho frS, oI;nn,or;r,, Of |
JorI;rb, lad ga fnn, tha ' 49, 81 s,Ii,o al
ths trees a-cbng overhead gara snIian and blant
When in marks !, nd woods the biab Iye, fam and
sodJa ,noss and nod of e. IIan iaa,,as anJ t,,,'t
Jus