MIND, MATTER, AND A GHOST STORY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 313, 11 January 1908, Page 3

MIND, MATTER, AND A GHOST STORY.

I 0 THE GHOST. I I saw a ghost once. I should immediI aie.lv add that I do not believe in ghoste; I that I loathe and despise Spiritualism; | that I never heard of a medium who was not, in my opinion, a hypocrite, a scoundrel, and a liar; and that all the vast literature which Ims gathered about (he occult is convincing evidenco—if any were required—that there are more maniacs, male and female, outeide than! inside lunatic asylums. But I saw a I ghost. j WHAT HAPPENED.

I «,!«■ lliv ghost so distinctly, too, that though it w;ik only f„ r a moment, and though it is thirty-five or thirty-six vcars since 1 saw it, I can recall it as distinctly as if it wore but yesterday. This i« what happened. 1 lived at the l ; mc in Dublin; I wan a young reporter, and accordingly I had ti find my humble lodging* in a remotish suburb. ] lived at Beggar's Hush Road. Kverybodv who knows Dublin will recognise at once the locality. The road ran alongside of the neggar'n Hush liarracks; and 1 occupied, with my snail fnniily of a brother and two sisters, the first floor in one of the tiny houses which there exist, or used to exist. Be<."MrV< Rush is one of the parts of Dublin which, contrary to the usual custom, has lieen growing in size and in appeawmc during the last quar t«r of a century, and the houses may lie larger now thin they were in mv time; though t don't think so. , A STAKTI-IXI! I'IIKXOMKXOX. One night 1 wan coining home at tin late hours which are common to tin journalist. 1 was walking on the op posite side of the street to that on which my house stood, along the, road under the wall of the barracks where then were no house* at all. I usually walkcc on this side, crossing over just' oppositt the hoase where I lived. As I was np proacliin..' my hniw. I saw on the side where it »tood a woman. She wore thirt small cloak or -luwl which tie". are in the habit of shifting cointantl'v from the head to the shoulders anil from the shoulders to the head. As I approached the spot where I tfas going to cross, T saw the woman pass ovej and T saw her movements so distinctly that I remember stil! how she shited witli a gesture characteristic of Ireland—a gesture shiftless, careless, despondent —how she shifted her shawl from her head to her shoulders and from Innshoulders to her head. By the time she had reached the other side of the road she would meet me if I continued walking on that side. Rut according to my custom T crossed over to my own side of the road, and to the little gate which led into the small garden in front of my house. Before going in I paused for a moetnnt; or I became conscious of a singular phenomenon. There were but a few yards between me and the spot where the woman should have readied: it was a bri'ghtish night; the view wns ipiite impossible for anv human being to be on that road without my seeing him or h-r. But I d'd not see the woman. I was struck by the phenmncson so much that I looked for several minutes in surprise, and in something approaching to fright; I looked in vain. The silent, desolate, empty road was unbroken by the sight of a single thing, living or dead; and ultimately I opened my gate, walked in, much wandering, and, going to lied, slept that unbroken sleep of the young and the just which I have not known for many a year. VIVID IMPRKSSIOXS.

When I woke up the next morning, I had that vague sense of something unusual having happened, which proved that through my- sleep there had been unconscious cerebration—as is often the case—and that this phenomenon of the night before had produced a considerable effect upon my imagination. If I went over all the incidents again, tliey were as clear to me as they arc now, and I know then that there could be no mistake about it. In the broad daylight, and wide awake ami fresh after a night's rest, the impression was as real and as vital as it had been in,the wearied and dark hours after midnight at whihe I had returned homo. I had seen a ghost. I A CURIOUS HABIT.

I have nerves; and 1 am often beset by vague apprehensions and nameless and shapeless terrors whieh are worse than anything real. 1 have some* strange and, to myself even, incomprehensible habits and inner convictions; of which the most frequent and strange is a curious attraction to the number three. I rarely if ever do anything once; I feel an irresistible impulse to repeat every act—even thtf most trivial—three times. If I think of it, I count the paces I take in walking in threes, if I touch one lamp post I toucli one lamp post I touch three. If I take srtlt at the. table I like to take it three times, and if I touch my face accidentally with my finger once I generally touch 'it three times. I do , not attach any meaning to the act. It , is not because 1 believe the number three is lucky, or that if I do not do tilings in successions of three times 1 am liable to huHit any evil consequence. Ido it—as I have said—in response to some ever present irresistible impulse from within, as though there were inside of me some will, yet remote from me and more powerful than myself. SUPERSTITION. But I do protest 1 am not superstitious. I haven't the least objection to being one of thirteen at a table; I make it a rule to walk undre a ladder whenever I see one in the street; it would not even occur to me to object to a room or a house—as 1 have known some people do—becauso it was numbered thirteen. I much prefer to have three candles burning beside my bed if I want to read than two. It doesn't worry me in the least to spill salt at tablq, though, if I did it once, 1 should have—still obeying that invisible and irresistible mental demon—to do it three times. I don't mind seeing cither one or two or three magpies in the early morning. Ido not believe that anybody has the evil eye—though there arc eyes which make me uncomfortable if they gaze nt me fixedly —but that ia because I dislike or dread tha individual behind the eyes, and not the eyes themselves. Ido not believe that it helps one to win at baccarat or trente et quarante at Vichy or Monte Carlo if you touch the hump of a hunchback, for the good reason that I never gamble; and, in short, I haTc no superstitions. • THE COST OF PHILOSOPHY. And, therefore, you may take it that if I say I saw the phenomenon I have described I did sec it. And yot the explanation to my mind is very simple, and is entirely free from any suggestion of the occuK or the unseen. I was working pretty hard at the time. I had very long hours; and, above all, I was at a stage of juvenile asininity which induces sadness and amusement in rotrospect to tjlis hour. For I had made up all kinds of mlcs and plans of life for myself. Nothing less would satisfy me than that my life should be quite different and, of course, quite superior to any that had ever been led before. Now, one of the many superstitions of the common mind, and one of the practices of the common man—l am giving my line of thought, it shows what a fool I then was—was that it was both agreeable and necessary to oat a great deal. ' The philosopher— I thought myself a philosopher—on the other hand know that a man could ito almsot without eating, and that, in any rase, it was futile, so squalid, and sn time-wasting a peri formanoe that it should be bwnight with- , in the smallest possible compass of time any money. And. acting on these absurd conceptions, T used to go all day long after breakfast without food, and when ■ midnight came or whatever hour at which T got home. T took a small bit of bread and •hecse. T have boon paying. , bv more than thirty years of dyspepsia, for this bit of Philosophy.

A section of the Canadian Northern I'aihvay. running north-west from Sudbury and crossing the Vermillion river, is niiii|iie in that it is ballasted with Sold. E»erv yard of the gravel used for ballast has been found to contain from .30 cents' worth to a dollar's worth of the precious metal, in the shape of fine dust, and a syndicate is installing machinery for its extraction.

The challenge cup offered liv the Scottish branch of the Society' of Stenographers has been won by Mr A. Taylor, M.A., Jiochpolly, with Pitman's system. The smnpetition was open to all systems. Mr Taylor scored 708 murks out of 8110. and in the speed section of Hie examination attained to 230 words per minute. Tn some parts of West Africa the girls have long engagements. On the day of their birth they arc betrothed to a baby hoy a liltle older than themselves, and at the age of twenty they are married. The girls know of no other way of getting a husband, and so they arc quite happy and satisfied. As wives they are patterns of obedience, and the marriages usually turn out sue-