The Arm Chair Library No. 79: The Haunted Homestead — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

that part of the country, where for so many years he had lived grand seig- neur. _ His wife was a Virginian by birth and education, and, in changing her home, preferred to return to her na- tive State. Therefore Mr. Legare pur- chaed a small estate lying within a fertile gap of the Alleghanies, to which, in the Spring of the next year, he removed his family. newpapers, that he had been nomi- nated to represent his district in the National House of Representatives. | Hoping much from the two cir- H cumstances of her own reduction in worldly fortune and her lover's eleva- y tion in social rank, which must bring them nearer together in position, she had called the attention of her father } to the announcement of Mr. Howard’s “ig nomination, but her fond expecta- “sy tions were soon dissipated by the old aristocrat’s comment: “ “Oh, yes, my dear, I see! Any up- start can get into Congress now. Real- ly, a private station is the seat of honor, but the comfort remains that if a patrician by birth is still a patri- cian, no matter how low his worldly fortunes; a plebeian is still a plebeian, even though accidents or caprice may | constitute him a legislator.” i “And now what shall I do, Agnes?” t wrote Mathilde, after recounting { these things. “Hope! If Mr. Howard is as con- | stant as you appear to be, you have everything to expect from time and change ordered by Providence,” was my written reply. I finally left school at the com- mencement of the Summer vacation following the Spring in which Mr. ) Legare’s family removed to their mountain home in Virginia. | r Up to this time Mathilde had heard | nothing directly from her Saratoga lover; but had learned, through the = THE HAUNTED HOMESTEAD, It was just’ before the ensuing Christmas that I received an invita- tion from Mathilde to come up and spend the holidays with her at her father’s new home. i alae In extending this invitation, she wrote: “I do not know, dear Agnes, how much or how little you may feel disposed to credit these modern, so- called spiritual manifestations—these ‘rappings,’ ‘table-tippings, etc., but I know your strong penchant for the supernatural and your inveterate habit of ghost-hunting, and I do as- sure you, if it will be any inducement for you to come to us, that our home contains as inexplicable a mystery as ever frightened human habitants away, and doomed a dwelling-place to desolation and decay, and this haunt- ing presence infests a house in a neighborhood as yet innocent of spirit-rappings, table-tippings and ‘sich like diviltries,’ as it is of rail- roads, steamboats and telegraph wires. But I shall say no more of this mys- tery until I see you ‘face to face’ éx- cept this, that even my unbelieving pa talks of selling the place unlegs the nuisance is explained and removed.” I think that it was the existence of this darkly intimated spectre that fas- cinated me to the point of accepting Mathilde’s invitation. Ghost-hunting was my one weakness—perhaps I should say monomania. [ secretly hoped that there might be a haunted chamber in the old house, and that they might put me to sleep in it ; fur- thermore, that I might be favored with an interview with the ghost. I resolved to go. No persuasion had power to withhold me, no obstacle to prevent me. My only brother was ex- pected home to spend Christmas, but I would not wait for him. I would, on the contrary, ask Mr. Legare to in- vite him to follow me. The weather was very severe, the snew covered the (EC) comicbook Pai tad