“Never mind for this time,” said the ghost. “I have had all that is good for me, and I always knew when I had enough. Besides, I would like to take a rise out of some of these fellows tonight. You see, it is a great thing for one so long dead to have any friends left alive anyhow and above all one who knows enough to bring any creature comforts like the pipe and whiskey.” The young man bowed, and said no more on that subject, but he began to think that this ghost was entirely too prolix. “Notice, my young friend,” said the ghost, confidentially, “as they strolled along toward the south side of the churchyard; “all these stones are set facing the sunrising. Now, some might think this was done on account of the formation of the ground, but it is not so, for it would have been just as easy to have faced them all south, north, east or west. This is simply the last lingering remains of the old heathen custom and belief that the rising sun represents the resurrection of the dead. The ancients also believed in pouring out drink offerings and libations, and, my friend, they were nearer right than we are with all our boasted civilization. Nothing can be of benefit to the dead, unless it is spirits which are ethereal in themselves, and smoke which is evanescent, and almost intangible. I assure you there are times when we could appreciate a glass of good rum. That being a spirit in itself, we assimilate it easily and enjoy it thoroughly. But our civilization does not believe in offering libations to the dead, more's the pity. I knew an old heathen once who had been buried hundreds of years, and he used to make us all as mad as hops when he told us how his descendants, as is the custom there, came regularly to his grave and poured out good spirits. By George! It almost made me wish that I had been one myself.” After that sentiment forcibly expressed, the couple walked along in silence for a short distance, and the ghost stubbed his toe against the slab covering the Barclay vault. This bore the date of 1762 in measurably clear letters. The good-natured ghost seemed suddenly changed in regard to the mildness of his disposition, as he hopped around on one bony foot and said things, some of them sounding like a word beginning with a big D and ending with a little n. The newspaper man bowed his head over the tomb of brave Lawrence, and had a severe coughing fit to cover up his unholy amusement, and whether it was that the ghost was too much occupied in rubbing his toe, or whether he really did not see it, this danger passed, and the ghost turned and limped toward the front of the church and across the porch. As he did so, he said: “Drat that toe! I'm sure I broke it off”