"Let us change the subject," said Sir Joseph, dryly; "I have no wish to test your powers in that direction; and so long as I don't give up the ghost, I suppose you must." "I would only say this," observed the Colonel,--"that in your book upon America I hope you will not fail to declare, that, in folly, deception, and unmitigated humbug, our Foxden spirits exceed all others ever seen or heard." "Sir Joseph Barley would be a foolish chronicler to commit himself to any such statement," said Dr. Burge, who seemed to feel it his duty to speak the moral _tag_ to our little Fast-Day interlude. "I cannot allow that these Foxden manifestations are one whit more silly or equivocal than many I have seen elsewhere. This shamming the ghost of somebody still alive is no uncommon deception: several cases of the sort have come under my recent observation. And it is well that they sometimes occur; for they must cause reflection in all who are not victims of a mental disorder which seems to confound the reasoning powers of man,--causing its subjects to accept as teachers phantoms of their morbid imaginations, or deceiving intelligences from without. To all, I say, but such as these, an imposition of the sort here noticed must send reflections of our total inability to identify any pretended spirit merely because he flatters our vanity, or talks what may seem _to us_ good morality or sound sense." Dr. Burge had laid aside his knife and fork, and had launched bravely forth upon his theme. Sir Joseph moved uneasily. Things were getting serious. Our host happily interposed,-- "Very true, Doctor, all very true;--yet there is one piece of wisdom regulating the spiritual practice which now seems worth considering." "And what is that, pray?" "They do not recognize Fast-Day." "Well, well," said Dr. Burge, taking the hint with the utmost good-humor, "perhaps they were not altogether wrong there; and so I will trouble Miss Prowley for a bit more of the steak, and----No, thank you, no beer for me; I am a water-drinker of twenty years' standing." "The toast I am about to propose," observed Colonel Prowley, "may, with exceeding propriety, be drunk in water,--that is, whenever milk-and-water is not to be had:-- _"Our spiritual demagogues, much weaker than our political ones, may they not be as much worse!"_ "And there is one other sentiment," said good Dr. Burge, brimming over with an honest hilarity,--"a toast which I should be willing to drink in pretty strong--coffee." "I have not forgotten that," exclaimed our host, proffering a hearty shake of the hand to the High Senior Governour and Primitive Patriarch of All Sextons,-- _"Health and a long life to Sir Joseph Barley!"_ PROSPICE.