Having spent a long and a very long winter's night in a haunted house with a corpse for his only companion, and having been treated with marked consideration by their ghostships in their not bothering him in any way, the writer feels under obligations to give the spirits a puff and keep alive their memory in an age of skepticism. He, therefore, craves the reader's patience while he relates the history of an invisible but exceedingly potent sprite that kept the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry in a terrible ferment for a long time and that to this day gives a name to a thriving village within a short distance of that town. Tourists who come to historic Harper's Ferry never fail to gather all the stories they can, not only of the town itself, but of the surrounding country, and it is partly for their benefit and partly to honor the spirits that treated him so cleverly, that the author gives the following legend. There are but few, indeed, in northern Virginia, who have not heard the tale a thousand times, with endless variations, all accounts, however, agreeing as to the main facts. The author has heard many versions of it, but he will give it as he got it from a gentleman now deceased--an ex-member of Congress and an ex-minister to one of the most important nations of Europe. This gentleman spent much of his youth in the immediate neighborhood of the village where the great mystery occurred and he was on the most intimate terms with one of the families that were conspicuous in the occurrence. Of course, he gave it as he received it himself. He was born when the spirit was rampant, but he got the story fresh from those who were witnesses to the mystery. He was an eminent man and deeply learned--a graduate of Georgetown College--and the writer would give a great deal to be able to relate the story with the inimitable grace of his informant. Of course, he did not believe the legend himself, but he cherished it as a memory of his childhood and as a choice morsel of folklore. THE LEGEND OF WIZARD CLIP.