“Pardon me for interrupting—I am a little out of practice in telling a story. To take up the thread of my narrative. Here you see a measly little slab of red sandstone, and no sign of the little cherub that sits up aloft watching out for the safety of poor Jack. I was a captain and commanded my own ship. She was as fine a vessel as ever rode out a gale. I loved every timber in her hull and every rope on the rigging and every spar and mast and sail as women love their young ones.” “I can quite understand that,” assented the young man. “Well, my ship made me a rich man. My relict, to offset the strict economy that she showed in the matter of stone, had a lot of stuff about my noble qualities and my pious—and all that. So much indeed, that not half shows above ground. All of this makes me just so much work and dirty work. Digging down in it without implements! You may see where it says that I sailed to Liverpool, and so I did, once or twice, but the most of my voyages were to the West Indies and to Africa. I brought cargoes of rum and molasses for the merchants who were in the business here then, and who were not ashamed of working in their own warehouses, and whose descendants today put on many grand airs. They talk about their ancestors, as though they had been of some superior clay. I hate airs, and always did. Nine out of ten of these old merchants dealt in either slaves or rum. The slaves came from the coast of Africa. I brought them for the account of these people whose descendants put on the airs. I suppose from the legend on my headstone if I had left any descendants they would have put on quite as many airs. I am glad I did not. As I said, I hate airs.” “I think any right-feeling person does,” hazarded the reporter, who was a little in doubt as to the outcome of this conversation. “I held my wife so close in money matters,” continued the ghost reminiscently, “being thrifty, and looking forward to the time when I should be able to stay on shore, that I never let her know how much I had. Later, when she got control of all my earnings she had so profited by my example and teachings that—well, you see what a headstone she gave me. I had done many things for that money—things that I now wish that I had not done. I taught her economy and by George! when she had a chance to pay me in my own coin, she did it and she did it well. Just look at that miserable chunk of old sandstone all covered with a lot of da—I mean a lot of untruthful stuff that will keep me at it I don’t know how many years yet. If she had known she could not have revenged herself on me worse. She gave all my clothes and a puncheon of good rum to the fool sculptor, and I am just waiting for him to come down here. If he ever does, I won’t do a thing to him but make him think he mistook his vocation and ought to have been a boiler maker and stayed safely in one of his iron-clad boilers.”