The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

144 What Shall She Do? other influences were at work. The more she entreated me to come, the less able was I to obey, until at length I saw reflected in the shaky looking glass at the foot of my bed, a strange shape that had not intruded upon us before. I do not remember distinctly what happened then. But this I do know, that the second shape drew me away from her serene highness and out into the night. The next I knew I was crossing the ocean. Then I found myself in a quaint old town, with queer houses, and still queerer people. In an hour more I was among the ruins of Rome, and then I scaled the Pyramids of Egypt; I talked tea to a Chinaman and coffee to a Java Islander. I was imprisoned in Siberia and ran a race with a Hottentot. It was wonderful what flights I took in an hour’s time. When I got back to my room the little princess was gone. During the whole of the Christmas day I went around in a dazed manner—drawn into myself, as my friends said. That was another Christmas day which I did not enjoy. I looked forward to the night, although I knew the little woman would not appear to me again. She never did appear to any one in that room but myself, and she never came to me after that Christmas eve. Ah! that haunted room! No phantom ever trod upon that floor or floated in the air but the fleeting phantom of my own early dreams. No ghost ever haunted that room overlooking the kitchen roof other than the ghost Gomicbook (Eo)