“We will say entertained, then,” said the lame ghost. “You may have noticed that I do not dance, nor can I walk about like others. I do not think I would make a good figure. I have a misfit leg.” “I—I—beg your pardon,” stammered the young man confused between curiosity and the fear of wounding the sensibilities of the ghost. “Just so,” resumed the ghost. “A misfit leg. Indeed I think it belongs to that young lady over there. But, as I see that she is provided with another, and I can manage to walk with this, I do not like to mortify her by mentioning it. You must admit that it would be very unpleasant for the young lady in company, now wouldn't it?” “Would it be considered rude of me to ask how so deplorable an accident occurred?” asked the reporter with much interest. “Certainly not,” replied the ghost with a Chesterfieldian bow. “It was just this way. I was a Van Der Dam, and I have been dead a long time. First I was buried in a little graveyard away down town, and all the dead were moved from there to make place for the leather trade warehouses, and we were taken to another cemetery that was so far from the business section that we thought we were to stay there forever. But, in a few years we had to get up and go on again. In a short time that land was wanted for building purposes, and I was removed again to another place so far out that it was thought no one would ever require that land, I am sure you have seen that place, for it was where the old and well-liked Metropolitan Hotel was afterwards built. And just to think! The trustees of Trinity Corporation once had the offer of a gift of six acres of land on the corner of Canal Street and Broadway, and refused it, thinking the expense of fencing it too great, and that it was so far from the city that it would cost more for taxes than it was worth. What those six acres are worth now must mount up to millions. “It was swampy, and we were not so very comfortable in this place, and we were not sorry when the order came to move us so they could build the hotel, which is but a memory now, with a big business house in its place. Many of my friends lie in unsuspected spots about that neighborhood yet. “When the foundation for the hotel was dug many of us were discovered, and they took the bones and threw them into a cart in one big box, and held an inquest over the lot, and carted them away, and I do not know where they put them. I was moved from there to another place right in the heart of the retail dry goods district. We were put in a Protestant cemetery and right opposite was an old Jewish graveyard. No money consideration had ever been powerful enough to get this spot, nor any other Jewish cemetery, for business. Stores have been built up all around it. A friend of mine lies right under a water butt, for our graves were crowded as much as possible. That is a very unpleasant location. You must admit that.”