Captain. Then you have served, sir?
Author. I have—or I have not, which signifies the same thing—Captain is a good travelling name.—I found my friend's house unexpectedly crowded with guests, and, as usual, was condemned—the mansion being an old one—to the haunted apartment. I have, as a great modern said, seen too many ghosts to believe in them, so betook myself seriously to my repose, lulled by the wind rustling among the lime-trees, the branches of which chequered the moonlight which fell on the floor through the diamonded casement, when, behold, a darker shadow interposed itself, and I beheld visibly on the floor of the apartment—
Captain. The White Lady of Avenel, I suppose?—You have told the very story before.
Author. No—I beheld a female form, with mob-cap, bib, and apron, sleeves tucked up to the elbow, a dredging-box in the one hand, and in the other a sauce-ladle. I concluded, of course, that it was my friend's cook-maid walking in her sleep; and as I knew he had a value for Sally, who could toss a pancake with any girl in the country, I got up to conduct her safely to the door. But as I approached her, she said,—“Hold, sir! I am not what you take me for;”—words which seemed so opposite to the circumstances, that I should not have much minded them, had it not been for the peculiarly hollow sound in which they were uttered.—“Know, then,” she said, in the same unearthly accents, “that I am the spirit of Betty Barnes.”—“Who hanged herself for love of the stage-coachman,” thought I; “this is a proper spot of work!”—“Of that unhappy Elizabeth or Betty Barnes, long cook-maid to Mr. Warburton, the painful collector, but ah! the too careless custodier, of the largest collection of ancient plays ever known—of most of which the titles only are left to gladden the Prolegomena of the Variorum Shakspeare. Yes, stranger, it was these ill-fated hands That consigned to grease and conflagration the scores of small quartos, which, did they now exist, would drive the whole Roxburghe Club out of their senses—it was these unhappy pickers and stealers that singed fat fowls and wiped dirty trenchers with the lost works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Jonson, Webster—what shall I say?—even of Shakspeare himself!”
Like every dramatic antiquary, my ardent curiosity after some play named in the Book of the Master of Revels, had often been checked by finding the object of my research numbered amongst the holocaust of victims which this unhappy woman had sacrificed to the God of Good Cheer. It is no wonder then, that, like the Hermit of Parnell,
“I broke the bands of fear, and madly cried,
'You careless jade!'—But scarce the words began,
When Betty brandish'd high her saucing-pan.”
“Beware,” she said, “you do not, by your ill-timed anger, cut off the opportunity I yet have to indemnify the world for the errors of my ignorance. In yonder coal-hole, not used for many a year, repose the few greasy and blackened fragments of the elder Drama which were not totally destroyed. Do thou then”—Why, what do you stare at, Captain? By my soul, it is true; as my friend Major Longbow says, “What should I tell you a lie for?”
Captain. Lie, sir! Nay, Heaven forbid I should apply the word to a person so veracious. You are only inclined to chase your tail a little this morning, that's all. Had you not better reserve this legend to form an introduction to “Three Recovered Dramas,” or so?
Author. You are quite right—habit's a strange thing, my son. I had forgot whom I was speaking to. Yes, Plays for the closet, not for the stage—
Captain. Right, and so you are sure to be acted; for the managers, while thousands of volunteers are desirous of serving them, are wonderfully partial to pressed men.