The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 149: what you’re looking at

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

142 What Shall She Do? apples, build a roaring fire in the old-fashioned fireplace (which was one of the additions to the home, and entirely outside of the dining room), and there, under the mellow- ing influence of a jug of good cider, confess what we had seen. Until then, silence. Of course, as holding the white lady’s chief camping ground, I stood the best chance of lifting the company’s hair when “twelfth night” came. And so the days passed on. But the house was really haunted. I was soon as thor- oughly convinced of the fact as I was skeptical of it at first. The first change that I noticed in my room was on the 19th of December. I was standing before the mirror on my dressing table, brushing my hair before going down to breakfast. As I looked in the mirror, I was astonished to see that I was smoothing the hair, not of a staid gen- tleman of thirty-seven years, but the obstinate capillary adornment of a boy. I shut my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them found the boy gone and a young man looking straight into my face. His eyes had a far- away, familiar look about them, as the eyes of an old friend just called up from the past, half recognized, half strange. The apparition remained until I turned away and went down to the breakfast room. That was the beginning of it. And after a beginning was once made IJ had not a night’s peace. From that time. I was led about into the wildest and most fantastic esca- pades imaginable. JI remember that very same night I Gomichbook (E(o)