But never again while the Civil War lasted did a girl in Tuskamuck put on black for a lover unless the engagement had been publicly recognized before his death.
A MEETING OF THE PSYCHICAL CLUB
I
The meeting of the Psychical Club had been rather dull, and it was just as the members were languidly expecting an adjournment that the only interesting moment of the evening came. The papers had been more than usually vapid, and, as one man whispered to another, not even a ghost could be convicted upon evidence so slight as that brought forward to prove the existence of disembodied visitants to certain forsaken and rat-haunted houses. At the last moment, however, the President, Dr. Taunton, made an announcement which did arouse some attention.
“Before we go,” he said, smiling with the air of one who desires it to be understood that in what he says he distinctly disclaims all personal responsibility, “it is my duty to submit to the Club a singular proposition which has been made to me. A gentleman whom I am not at liberty to name, but who is personally known to many—perhaps to most—of you, offers to give to the Club an exhibition of occult phenomena.”
The members roused somewhat, but too many propositions of a nature not dissimilar had ended in entire failure and flatness for any immediate enthusiasm.
“What are his qualifications?” a member asked.
“I did not dream that he possessed any,” Dr. Taunton responded, smiling more broadly. “Indeed, to me that is the interesting thing. I had never suspected that he had even the slightest knowledge or curiosity in such matters, and still less that he made any pretensions to occult powers. The fact that he is a man of a position so good and of brains so well proved as to make it unlikely that he would gratuitously make a fool of himself is the only ground on which his proposition seems to me worth attention.”