Mrs. Parkins, my laundress—wife of Parkins the porter, then newly dead of a dropsy—had particular instructions to place a bedroom candle and a match under the staircase lamp on my landing, in order that I might light my candle there, whenever I came home. Mrs. Parkins invariably disregarding all instructions, they were never there. Thus it happened that on this occasion I groped my way into my sitting-room to find the candle, and came out to light it. What were my emotions when, underneath the staircase lamp, shining with wet as if he had never been dry since our last meeting, stood the mysterious Being whom I had encountered on the steam-boat in a thunderstorm, two years before! His prediction rushed upon my mind, and I turned faint. “I said I’d do it,” he observed, in a hollow voice, “and I have done it. May I come in?” “Misguided creature, what have you done?” I returned. “I’ll let you know,” was his reply, “if you’ll let me in.” Could it be murder that he had done? And had he been so successful that he wanted to do it again, at my expense? I hesitated. “May I come in?” said he. I inclined my head, with as much presence of mind as I could command, and he followed me into my chambers. There, I saw that the lower part of his face was tied up, in what is commonly called a Belcher handkerchief. He slowly removed this bandage, and exposed to view a long dark beard, curling over his upper lip, twisting about the corners of his mouth, and hanging down upon his breast. “What is this?” I exclaimed involuntarily, “and what have you become?” “I am the Ghost of Art!” said he. The effect of these words, slowly uttered in the thunderstorm at midnight, was appalling in the last degree. More dead than alive, I surveyed him in silence. “The German taste came up,” said he, “and threw me out of bread. I am ready for the taste now.” He made his beard a little jagged with his hands, folded his arms, and said, “Severity!” I shuddered. It was so severe. He made his beard flowing on his breast, and, leaning both hands on the staff of a carpet-broom which Mrs. Parkins had left among my books, said: “Benevolence.” I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment was entirely in the beard. The man might have left his face alone, or had no face. The beard did everything. He laid down, on his back, on my table, and with that action of his head threw up his beard at the chin. “That’s death!” said he. He got off my table and, looking up at the ceiling, cocked his beard a little awry; at the same time making it stick out before him. “Adoration, or a vow of vengeance,” he observed. He turned his profile to me, making his upper lip very bulgy with the upper part of his beard. “Romantic character,” said he.