“But, you really must join us. I had a seat reserved for you at this table where you can see everything that is going on, and where you will have a chance to learn many things of which you never heard. Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to introduce a friend of mine, who is not yet of us, but whom I have invited to pass the evening with us. I hope you will make him welcome for my sake until you learn to like him for his own.” There was a confused murmur intended as a welcome accompanied with bows from all the guests at this table. The newspaper man saw that all these ghosts were really hungry, and ate with genuine appetite. The wine was poured out in generous quantities, and they drank as if exceedingly thirsty, and soon the great hall rang with laughter, and lively sallies of wit and anecdote. He tried so hard to listen to them all that to his intense chagrin he found afterward that he could not remember half of it and what he did recollect was so disjointed that it was worse than none. The ghost seemed to think it a great joke that one not dead should be among them, and many witticisms were launched at him on account of his too evident curiosity. The good-natured ghost told him that he probably would not get much nourishment out of what they gave him, and that he was very sorry that he could not offer him something to take home to the children, as was the custom when he was young. He told how he cried when his parents went anywhere and failed to bring him home some of the good things they had had at the party. The young man answered in the same strain and said that he was not hungry, and even if he were the feast of reason and flow of soul would more than satisfy him. While the guests were eating, the young stranger within their gates was observing with great interest everything about him. There was quite as wide a difference in the way the ghosts acted as among the living, and he saw some shoveling the food into their fleshless jaws with knives. He remarked that some who ate with their knives tried to give something of grace to the movement by turning the blade outward, and these ghosts held their spoons with the points to the mouths and to render this more elegant they stuck one little finger out stiffly, while grasping the handle in their bony fingers. “But you must join us”