Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/464

456 “Alive and kicking,” was his expression.

“You haven’t come from the other world, then?” My voice sank to a whisper.

“Yes, I have,” he answered, heartily. “Just landed, from Panama; been busy surveying the Isthmus.”

“Well, and how are you?” I asked, after a short pause, during which we had stood looking at each other, apparently not knowing what to say next.

“How am I?” he repeated. “I’ll tell you. Hard up, that’s how I am.” He drew me towards him abruptly, and whispered, “You couldn’t lend me five pounds, could you, old fellow? I’ve only got three and threepence in the world, and I am starting to-morrow for Siberia, as a photographer.”

It was quite clear, then, that he had not called and paid the £3 9s. 2d.

Probably Mrs. Kiswick’s explanation was, after all, the most reasonable; and yet I cling to my spectral illusion. Pray who doesn’t cling to his illusions, spectral or otherwise? I con over all Dr. Johnson has said about ghosts with a deep admiration; and I can’t quite satisfy myself. Did I, or did I not, see Charley Rollingstone’s ghost? Was it simply Mrs. Kiswick? Was it a phantom, born of dyspepsia? Was it an exhalation arising from old brown mahogany East India sherry of enormous strength and flavour? I cannot make up my mind upon the matter.

“The fact is, Piper, old man, you haven’t mind enough to make a conviction out of. Drop it, do. You’re getting an awful bore with your spectral illusion.”

I think it due to the reader to present him with this remark. It was made by a friend to whom I had, more than once, perhaps, mentioned my case. He’s a hasty man, I am bound to say; indeed, he writes in the papers, and is one of the most acidulated reviewers I happen to be acquainted with.

.—In the Harleian MSS. (No. 980-7) we find mention made of a certain Scottish weaver who had no less than sixty-two children, and all by one wife. This family included four daughters, who lived to be women, and the rest of the three-score and two were boys, who all lived to be baptised. Out of these, forty-six actually reached man’s estate. The writer, one Thomas Gibbons, adds, that during the time of this fruitfulness on the part of the wife, the husband was absent for some five years in the Low Countries, where he served under Captain Selby; and that after his return home his wife was again delivered of three children at a birth, and “continued in her due time in such births” until she ceased childbearing. The informant of Mr. Gibbons was John Delaval, Esq., of Northumberland, who was high sheriff of that county in 1625, and who, in 1630, rode from Newcastle to a place about thirty miles beyond Edinburgh to see this worthy and fruitful couple. Mr. Delaval, however, did not find any of the children then residing with their parents, though three or four of them were living at Newcastle at the time. It appears that Sir John Bowes, and other wealthy Northumbrian “gentlemen of quality” adopted and brought up the children in batches of ten and twelve a piece, and that the residue were “disposed of” by others among the Scottish and English gentlemen of the Border Country.