The newspaper man looked at this ghost with considerable interest, and thought that of all the ghosts he was the cleanest. He had noticed this ghost sitting at a rude table near the door. There was a candle burning there and an inkstand, and two immense books. The ghost sat balancing a pen, but was doing no writing. He had noticed him then as his skull and bones fairly shone, so white and polished they were. It was not the intention of the young man to ask any impertinent questions about anything he saw there, but he thought to himself that when he was alone with the good-natured ghost he would ask him how this phenomenon had occurred. While he was thinking this, a polished ghost turned to him and said: “Young stranger, I notice that you are somewhat interested in me, and far from feeling hurt at your natural curiosity, I am flattered by it and if you wish it I will tell you in a few words how it happens that I am so white after having been so long dead.” The young man felt his blood all mount to his face as he saw that even his secret thought could not be hidden, and he reflected that if even these ghosts knew what he thought, how impossible it would be to hide action or thought from the Master, as the ghosts called the One. “Ahem! young sir, that is the right feeling. But to resume. I was married to a very sensible and worthy woman, with no nonsense about her. She kept her house well, and everything that she could do for my comfort and happiness she did. I felt very badly to leave her, but once you are called you must go, and I went. At that time Long Island City was scarcely more than a hole in the ground, and the church to which I belonged found that it would soon become necessary to remove from New York City, so they purchased a plot of ground quite in the outskirts of the former named place. I was laid in the old churchyard until they should be ready to remove us all. We were finally taken over there and put into the meanest kind of ground, all soaked with tidewater and the refuse of ages, which had been swept there by the tides until it grew to what no one with any regard for the truth would call solid ground. It is unhealthy even for a dead man. “Forget it, forget it!” “Well, there was a sudden rush for that place for its commercial value, and if I remember rightly I laid about where the big sugar refinery now stands. But it may have been a little further along, for I had the chills so bad during all this time that it is not to be wondered at if I am a bit hazy as to the exact location. We were all glad when we were moved from that place to one further from the shore. This was really a comfortable graveyard, but somebody wanted this place, too, and we found that we had congratulated ourselves too soon, and we were informed that we were to be moved again.