“One evening, a long time after the occurrence just related, a company of ladies and gentlemen, in a house situated near the observatory, Portland, Maine, were conversing upon the general subject of ghosts, and rewards and punishments after death. When we sat down there were thirteen persons in the room, and thirteen persons only. We became deeply absorbed in the discussion, indeed so much so, that the host gave the servant strict orders not to disturb us, and to refuse admission to any person whatever. And thus we all talked freely, the servant seated in the hall, close by the door. No one was admitted. Presently one person, by reason of his eloquence and venerable appearance, engrossed all our attention by the thrilling things he told, although he did not join the conversation till over an hour after we had begun it; nor did his conversation appear at all intrusive. He was the _fourteenth_ person, although we did not realize the fact till we were separating, and he had disappeared. Upon inquiry no one knew him, had ever seen him before, or observed his departure--not even the servant, who declared that for two hours no one had passed him either way. It was voted ‘very strange,’ and that for our own credit sake the matter should be ‘hushed up;’ but we agreed to meet again at the same house, that day-week, to discuss the matter, and compare opinions arrived at in the interim.” CHAPTER IV. A VERY STRANGE STORY--ETTELAVAR! “On the appointed evening a select party of us met pursuant to agreement; but not one had reached a solution of the mystery. In those days the impostor Davis had not foisted his blasphemous absurdities on the world; nor had his peculiar system of morals made rogues of the one half of his deluded followers, or shameless harlots of the other; nor had lunatic asylums then been packed, as they have since, with sufferers ruined by his teachings; nor were graveyards dotted with the mounds raised by weeping friends over loved ones driven to suicide by his doctrines. In those days a man’s wife was comparatively safe, nor were divorces half so common as they have since become. In those days husbands did not sneak off to Indiana, and by blank perjury procure divorce in order that they might revel in barefaced, shameless, open lust with their worthy paramours. In those days spiritualism had not broken in on the world, nor had the goblin philosophy made millions of fools and idiot fanatics out of material that God created for better purposes. In those days Joe Smith had not convinced thousands that harlotry is the straightest road to heaven; nor had Noyes founded his huge religious brothel in the centre of the State, contaminating the country for leagues around; and the handy system of ghostology, with its hundred truths and thousand falsehoods, had not then afforded a ready explanation of mysteries such as those I have recounted; nor had any man