Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/147

Rh the corpse with my own eyes. He was tall and slim, very fair, and had dark hair.

Did this throw a gloom over the house? No; for that very evening there was a tremendous large ball. The corpse was immediately taken away, and placed in a vault, and at the first opportunity sent to Kentucky. For my own part, the gloom did not wear off for a month; and I thought if I crossed the hall, that ghosts and hobgoblins were right behind me; and when I would go home at night, I would light three or four candles and place them in every part of the room, for the hospital was just opposite where I lived, and I knew every death that took place—man, woman, or child—by the toll of the bell. When a man would die. it would strike three times; a woman, twice, and a child, once; and never a night passed but it would toll several times. I must laugh now to think how frightened I was one day in going down the back stairs. I heard some one coming down very rapidly behind me; when I turned round I found it to be a gentleman who had just left a lady's apartment who he had been in the habit of visiting in her husband's absence, and as soon as he heard him come up the front stairs, he would rush down the back stairs. I went to the lady's room to see what was the matter, and I found her almost fainting for fear her husband had seen the man; while the husband, frightened, thinking his wife very sick, was putting back her massive curls to bathe her temples. The gentleman was frightened for fear he had been seen; and I, also, frightened on account of his haste. However, I got through that week very quietly, without seeing hobgoblins or being frightened to death.