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The Haunted Homestead

BY MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH

CHICAGO M. A. DONOHUE & CO.

THE HAUNTED HOMESTEAD.

A residence for woman, child, or man, A dwelling-place--and yet no habitation; A house, but under some prodigious ban Of excommunication.--HOOD.

In childhood I always had a fearless faith in ghosts. I desired before all sights to see them, and threw myself in the way of meeting them whenever and wherever there seemed the slightest possibility of so doing. Whenever there were mysterious sounds heard in the night, I listened with breathless interest, arose from the bed in silent eagerness, and went stealing on tiptoe through the dark house in the hopes of meeting the ghosts. Once I met a severe blow on the nose from the sharp edge of an open door, and once a tom cat, who made one spring from the top of the pantry shelves upon my head, and another thence through a broken window pane. I would have liked to fancy him a ghostly cat, only I knew him too well for our own "Tom," the cunningest thief that ever run on four feet. Another time, perambulating through the house at midnight, I surprised a burglar, who, mistaking me in the darkness for the master of the house, the watch, or an ambush, jumped straight over my head , and made his escape at the back door. But I must say that I never met a ghost, or even a "vestige" of a ghost until--but I think I will begin at the beginning and tell you the whole story.

As Mathilde was rich and I was comparatively poor, this friendship brought me many advantages, among which was the privilege of annual travel and change of scene. About the first of every July, Mathilde's father and mother would leave their sugar plantation in Louisiana, and travel northward. They usually arrived at the Newton Academy about the tenth of the month, in time to be present at the annual examination and exhibition of the pupils. Upon these occasions, Mathilde, who possessed quickness and vivacity, rather than depth or strength of mind, generally achieved a brilliant success; though she often told me that her triumph in being first at these milestones on the road to fame, was nothing more than the success of the swift-footed, careless hare over the slow and painstaking tortoise, who would win the race at the goal.

However this might be, Mr. and Mrs. Legare were equally proud of their daughter's genius and beauty, and to reward her "industry and application," as they called it, they took her each year to spend the long vacation of July and August, with them, in making a tour of the Virginia Springs, which are the most frequented by Southerners, for the convenience of bringing their servants with them.

Upon one occasion, however--that of the vacation preceding the last year of Mathilde's residence at school--Mr. Legare determined to vary their usual route by going to the Northern watering places of Saratoga and Ballstown. And, as usual, I, with the consent of my guardians, accompanied the party as their invited guest.

We arrived at Saratoga at the very height of the season. In all, I suppose that there might have been several thousand visitors at the springs. The United States Hotel, at which we stopped, was uncomfortably crowded. And, though Mr. Legare grumbled in a very old-gentlemanly way, and Mrs. Legare wished herself at home again, Mathilde and I enjoyed the crowd for the crowd's sake, and experienced the truth of the popular adage of "the more the merrier."

At a place like that, even in the ballroom, "distinction" was almost as impossible as it is said to be in London, where, now that the "duke" is dead, no one is any one. Scarcely anybody was anybody at Saratoga that season. Many a village beauty, the toast of her own little circle, and many a city belle, the queen of her own coterie, who went thither, reasonably expecting to make a "sensation," found herself and her claims to notice lost in a brilliant multitude all more or less expectant or disappointed.

I thought Mathilde, with her tall and beautifully rounded form, stately head, pure olive complexion, shaded by jet-black ringlets, and lighted up by laughing black eyes, bridged over with arch and flexible black eyebrows--would attract some attention.

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