Meanwhile, the spirits made replies
To all the reverent whats and whys,
Resolving doubts of every size,
And giving seekers grave and wise,
Who came to know their destinies,
A rap-turous reception;
When unbelievers void of grace
Came to investigate the place,
(Creatures of Sadducistic race,
With grovelling intellects and base,)
They could not find the slightest trace
To indicate deception;
Indeed, it is declared by some
That spirits (of this sort) are glum,
Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb,
And (out of self-respect) quite mum
To sceptic natures cold and numb,
Who of this kind of Kingdom Come

Have not a just conception:
True, there were people who demurred
That, though the raps no doubt were heard
Both under them and o'er them,
Yet, somehow, when a search they made,
They found Miss Jenny sore afraid,
Or Jenny's lover, Doctor Slade,
Equally awe-struck and dismayed,
Or Deborah, the chamber-maid,
Whose terrors not to be gainsaid,
In laughs hysteric were displayed,

Was always there before them; This had its due effect with some Who straight departed, muttering, Hum! Transparent hoax! and Gammon ! But these were few: believing souls Came, day by day, in larger shoals, As the ancients to the windy holes 'Neath Delphi's tripod brought their doles,

Or to the shrine of Ammon.

The spirits seemed exceeding tame,
Call whom you fancied, and he came;
The shades august of eldest fame

You summoned with an awful ease;
As grosser spirits gurgled out
From chair and table with a spout,
In Auerbach's cellar once, to flout
The senses of the rabble rout,
Where'er the gimlet twirled about

Of cunning Mephistopheles,
So did these spirits seem in store,
Behind the wainscot or the door,
Ready to thrill the being's core
Of every enterprising bore

With their astounding glamour;
Whatever ghost one wished to hear,
By strange coincidence, was near
To make the past or future clear

(Sometimes in shocking grammar)
By raps and taps, now there, now here-
It seemed as if the spirit queer
Of some departed auctioneer
Were doomed to practise by the year
With the spirit of his hammer:
Whate'er you asked was answered, yet
One could not very deeply get
Into the obliging spirits' debt,
Because they used the alphabet
In all communications,

And new revealings (though sublime)
Rapped out, one letter at a time,

With boggles, hesitations,

Stoppings, beginnings o'er again,
And getting matters into train,
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 toe,
(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.

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;

"T was 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 pedler; Some on ye still are on my books !" Whereat, to inconspicuous nooks, (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 everything the rest did.

Eliab this occasion seized,
(Distinctly here the spirit sneezed,)
To 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 rumor 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 't was 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 gray
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 pedler'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 color 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
Are perfectly aware, bones,
If buried fifty years or so,
Lose their identity and grow

From human bones to bare bones."

Still, if to Jaalam you go down,
You'll find two parties in the town,
One headed by Benaiah Brown,

And one by Perez Tinkham;
The first believe the ghosts all through
And vow that they shall never rue
The happy chance by which they knew
That people in Jupiter are blue,
And very fond of Irish stew,

Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo Rapped clearly to a chosen few

Whereas the others think 'em

A trick got up by Doctor Slade
With Deborah the chamber-maid

And that sly cretur Jinny.
That all the revelations wise,

At which the Brownites made big eyes,
Might have been given by Jared Keyes,
A natural fool and ninny,
And, last week, did n't Eliab Snooks
Come back with never better looks,

As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks,
And bright as a new pin, eh?
Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers
(Though to be mixed in parish stirs
Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs)

That no case to his mind occurs
Where spirits ever did converse,
Save in a kind of guttural Erse,

(So say the best authorities ;)
And that a charge by raps conveyed
Should be most scrupulously weighed
And searched into, before it is
Made public, since it may give pain
That cannot soon be cured again,
And one word may infix a stain
Which ten cannot gloss over,
Though speaking for his private part,
He is rejoiced with all his heart
Miss Knott missed not her lover.