Could hardly overload the brain
With too excessive rations,
Since just to ask if two and two
Really make four? or How d'ye do?
And get the fit replies thereto
In the tramundane rat-tat-too,

Might ask a whole day's patience.

'Twas strange ('mongst other things) to find In what odd sets the ghosts combined, Happy forthwith to thump any

Piece of intelligence inspired,

The truth whereof had been inquired
By some one of the company;
For instance, Fielding, Mirabeau,
Orator Henley, Cicero,

Paley, John Zisca, Marivaux,
Melancthon, Robertson, Junot,
Scaliger, Chesterfield, Rousseau,
Hakluyt, Boccaccio, South, De Foe,
Diaz, Josephus, Richard Roe,
Odin, Arminius, Charles le gros,
Tiresias, the late James Crow,
Casabianca, Grose, Prideaux,

Old Grimes, Young Norval, Swift, Brissot,
Maimonides, the Chevalier D'O,

Socrates, Fenelon, Job, Stow,

The inventor of Elixir pro,

Euripides, Spinoza, Poe,

Confucius, Hiram Smith, and Fo,
Came (as it seemed, somewhat de trop)
With a disembodied Esquimaux,

To say that it was so and so,

With Franklin's expedition;

One testified to ice and snow,

One that the mercury was low,
One that his progress was quite slow,

One that he much desired to go,

One that the cook had frozen his toc
(Dissented from by Dandolo,
Wordsworth, Cynaegirus, Boileau,
La Hontan, and Sir Thomas Roe),
One saw twelve white bears in a row,
One saw eleven and a crow,

With other things we could not know
(Of great statistic value, though)
By our mere mortal vision.

Sometimes the spirits made mistakes, And seemed to play at ducks and drakes With bold inquiry's heaviest stakes

In science or in mystery;

They knew so little (and that wrong),
Yet rapped it out so bold and strong,
One would have said the entire throng
Had been Professors of History;
What made it odder was, that those
Who, you would naturally suppose,
Could solve a question, if they chose,
As easily as count their toes,

Were just the ones that blundered;
One day, Ulysses happening down,
A reader of Sir Thomas Browne

And who (with him) had wondered
What song it was the Sirens sang,
Asked the shrewd Ithacan-bang! bang!
With this response the chamber rang,
"I guess it was Old Hundred.”
And Franklin, being asked to name
The reason why the lightning came,
Replied, "Because it thundered."

On one sole point the ghosts agreed,
One fearful point, than which, indeed,
Nothing could seem absurder;

Poor Colonel Jones they all abused,
And finally downright accused

The poor old man of murder;
'Twas thus; by dreadful raps was shown
Some spirit's longing to make known
A bloody fact, which he alone
Was privy to (such ghosts more prone
In Earth's affairs to meddle are);
Who are you? with awe-stricken looks,
All ask his airy knuckles he crooks,
And raps, "I was Eliab Snooks,
That used to be a peddler;

Some on ye still are on my books!"
Whereat, to inconspicuous looks

(More fearing this than common spooks),
Shrank each indebted meddler;
Further the vengeful ghost declared
That while his earthly life was spared,
About the country he had fared,
A duly licensed follower

Of that much-wandering trade that wins
Slow profit from the sale of tins

And various kinds of hollow-ware;
That Colonel Jones enticed him in,
Pretending that he wanted tin,
There slew him with a rolling-pin,
Hid him in a potato-bin,

And (the same night) him ferried
Across Great Pond to t'other shore,
And there, on land of Widow Moore,
Just where you turn to Larkin's store,
Under a rock him buried;

Some friends (who happened to be by) He called upon to testify

That what he said was not a lie,

And that he did not stir this

Foul matter, out of any spite
But from a simple love of right;—

Which statements the Nine Worthies, Rabbi Akiba, Charlemagne,

Seth, Colley Cibber, General Wayne,
Cambyses, Tasso, Tubal-Cain,
The owner of a castle in Spain,
Jehanghire, and the Widow of Nain
(The friends aforesaid), made more plain
And by loud raps attested;

To the same purport testified

Plato, John Wilkes, and Colonel Pride,
Who knew said Snooks, before he died,
Had in his wares invested,
Thought him entitled to belief,
And freely could concur, in brief,
In every thing the rest did.

Eliab this occasion seized
(Distinctly here the spirit sneezed)
Το
say that he should ne'er be eased
Till Jenny married whom she pleased,
Free from all checks and urgin's
(This spirit dropt his final g's),
And that, unless Knott quickly sees
This done, the spirits to appease,
They would come back his life to tease,
As thick as mites in ancient cheese,
And let his house on an endless lease
To the ghosts (terrific rappers these
And veritable Eumenides)

Of the Eleven Thousand Virgins! Knott was perplexed, and shook his head, He did not wish his child to wed

With a suspected murderer

(For, true or false, the rumour spread),

But as for this roiled life he led,

"It would not answer," so he said,

"To have it go no furderer,"

At last, scarce knowing what it meant,
Reluctantly he gave consent

That Jenny, since 'twas evident
That she would follow her own bent,
Should make her own election ;
For that appeared the only way
These frightful noises to allay
Which had already turned him grey
And plunged him in dejection.

Accordingly, this artless maid
Her father's ordinance obeyed,
And, all in whitest crape arrayed
(Miss Pulsifer the dresses made,
And wishes here the fact displayed
That she still carries on the trade,
The third door south from Bagg's Arcade),
A very faint "I do" essayed

And gave her hand to Hiram Slade,

From which time forth the ghosts were laid,

And ne'er gave trouble after;

But the Selectmen, be it known,
Dug underneath the aforesaid stone

Where the poor peddler's corpse was thrown,
And found thereunder a jaw-bone,

Though when the crowner sat thereon,
He nothing hatched, except alone
Successive broods of laughter;

It was a frail and dingy thing,
In which a grinder or two did cling,
In colour like molasses,

Which surgeons called from far and wide,
Upon the horror to decide,

Having put on their glasses,
Reported thus-"To judge by looks

These bones, by some queer hooks or crooks

May have belonged to Mr. Snooks,

But, as men deepest-read in books