The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-01-30
Ghost or Guardian,

CHAPTER I.- THE GIRL WHO DIDN'T BE-
 LIEVE IN GHOSTS.
 "There are shrimps which must be half-boilei before they redden,'' read Frank Clarie,is, his back to an old rough parked elm, his kndpsack, bereft of the volume IF his hand, at his feet. Bravo bravissimo Capital idea, splepdidly put. Not word too much, not word too lit tie. What prince among writers that man was! What multitude of shrimps the world contaiEs What a mercy it is there are so many people to be found willing to undert lke the boiling process Now come to think of it, though, why does he say half boiled ? Hal boiling implies a certain timidity of treatment of the ot ectionable Crustacean which the writer certainly does not mean to advo- cate. Also, is there no, something of ambiguity in the way in which he states an assured and universal facti Now, for instance, if l were 10 say, There are niggers who must be fogged before they can be made 10 work l should imply that there are others who do not need the lash. Surely the phrase would carry with 1t fuller meaning read thus: All shrimps must be- No; all is a word too many. Shrimps must be boiled be- fore they can be- What? Eaten2 No. Let me read the sentence again. There are shrimps-' Confound it All the meaning has gone out of the thing. Oh, you idiot! Here you are playing nine pins with your brains again-setting up a something for the sake of knocking 1t and LoR into the bargain Y
 Here, with most pronounced bang, be closed his volume, and gave it a most emphatic toss yard or so distant on the damp grass.
 Frank Char;eris was taking an enforced holiday. He had been studying hard for the bar, and had come out of his final examination with flying colors. Then he had marked out for himself course of supplementary reading.
 t" It Is contemptble thing" he had said loftily to friend, for a man to be able just to get through his exams, then break down, and do nothing for months His legal knowledge should be so thorough, he should have such complete grasp of his subjects, that his exams should not strain his powers simply prove them, show him what ground he has gone over, and to what he may now advance"
 His friend had agreed with him, but, nevertheless, when Frank was we'll out of hearing, had said to another man:
 There's something very wrong with Charteris. Look at his eyes! I'm half a doctor, you know, and I've only once before in my life seen man with such look as that on his face, and he died a month afterward of brain congestion"
 Frank stuffed his book-shelves with solld-looking volumes, abstracts, digests, and such like, opened the most dry-as- dust ot them all, began the first sentence, and caught at its meaning inverted it, and read it a second time and, strange to say, found it meant exactly the oppo- site of what he had at first supposed {; reinverted it, and tried to pu, its original meaning into it, and, strangest thing ot all, found that meaning 1t ad none the words called up no ideas whatever to his mind.
 He closed his volume, and went to his looking-glass. In it he saw fair, we'll featured face; broad, white forehead surmounted by curly brown hair and a pair of blue eyes with an odd, fcverish wandering look in ihem-the look, in fact, that had disconnected his friend. He shook his fist at himself, anathem atized his own weak head and nerves, walked straight out of the house, and called upon the first doctor whose name shone resplendent on brass plate.
 The doctor smiled at him blandly.
 Torpid and weakened brain, my friend" he said. "The inc sitable reac- ton from it's over-exertion. You have just pulled yourself up on the brink of a long illness. Quit the legal and go in for the pastoral-in other words, tramp it across country to your people in the south. Look up yorr friends as you go along. Rest tyour brain work your body {; eat plenty of good food and recreate your mind, as the Americans say, on any of the shilling-volume rubbish you can find upon the book-stalls."
 So Frank locked up his bookcase, packed his knapsack, and set of on foot toward the southern countries, going on an average from ten to fifteen miles daily.
 And, possibly by way of playing of practical joke on himself, he took for his mental recreation and pabulum a volume of Landor's Imaginary Conversations 1" the identical volume which he had cast with such disgust yard from him on the damp turf
 It is all very well for the poet to sing the glories of " an empty sky, a world of heather" Something of the nimbus of the said sky and heather is owing not doubt to the journeying along together" which forms so apt a rhyme and corol- lary to the heather. But when a man for all companionship has to turn to a vol ume of imaginary conversations !"