“Now, sir, I am at your disposal. I will tell you why it is that I am reduced to this condition and am obliged to eat like an animal. The story began in life, and it was not until I had been down here two years that this happened. I found an enemy and he it was who made me this pitiable object. The reason? Oh, I lived in New York in a handsome house of my own in Sixty-fourth Street, near the park on the East Side. I mention this, as the proximity has something to do with the story. That is, the big reservoir is there and that causes a higher pressure of water in the houses there than in almost any other part of the city. I lived there in peace and contentment, and was something of a savant. So you can see that I am not altogether to blame for what follows. You know how all the houses are built, one beside the other. On the West side of my house was that of a man—well—we will call him Dinklespiel. That was not his real name—but it is good enough for him after the way he has treated me. Yes; I will call him Dinklespiel. Well; his front door was right beside mine. You could reach into his hall way over the low stone division. The next house on the East side was the whole width of the house away. Now, if Mr. Dinklespiel had lived in that house this would not have occurred. “It so happened that our man who attended to all these things for me was out in the country getting the place in readiness for our annual flitting, and there was no one to clean the sidewalk and we had had coal in the day before. I admit that it would have been better to hire a man as my wife suggested, but somehow I felt like doing it myself, and that is how the trouble began.” Here the ghost appeared lost in reflection so the young man asked what would have been better left to a hired man. The ghost shook off his distraction and resumed. “Why, I got the garden hose—well—I got the hose and washed down the sidewalk. I told you about the high pressure, and that was the cause of it all. I got the hose,—the hose—and dragged it up from the cellar, and told the girl to go down and turn the water on, when I whistled. This hose was bought to protect us from fire as well as to wash the sidewalk and water the grass in the back yard, and it had a nozzle one inch in diameter. It was a big hose, and when James took hold of it I always noticed that his face grew red as though he found it hard to hold. But I always thought that it was his ignorance that made him so afraid of it, and I was sure that I could manage it all right and I even rather prided myself on the showing I should make of the triumph of mind over matter. I had never tried to manage a hose before, and even now I should not, I think, have had any trouble if there had been no hole in the hose.