There are more tangible proofs of the existence of ghosts than there are of the existence of Noah’s ark. The hush of the night, the solitude of forests, the loneliness of limitless prairies suggest, to the most unimaginative mind something more than the physical sense of desertion and isolation; and yet that is no proof that a mystic band of weird spirits are with you in those dreary hours and wanderings; but whatever is suggested proceeds from a thing that is able to suggest, and whatever the mind grapples with of the material or the immaterial exists in some form or other, intangible, but no less existent. The opponents of the theory of the existence of ghosts, and their power to appear, use one word that conveys all their logic, and that word is the contemptuous vulgarism, Bosh! And then they will advance with weaker argument the logic of bold contradiction, as if they had just returned from a trip into the regions of the future and an examination of the powers and rules and intents of the Providence, with an exact catalogue of his attributes and short-hand notes to be written out at their leisure, of all he has done, is doing, and is going to do. Faraday could analyze vapor, but, with all his retorts and crucibles and chemicals, he never could weigh a scintilla of a human thought. Such men grasp vapor in their hand, and will tell you of what it is composed; and they tell you truly, and we, though consciously ignorant, have no foothold for a doubt. The preacher rises in his pulpit, and, from his sectarian books, and more sectarian training, interprets to you the sublimest dogmas of the Apocalypse; and woe to the member of his flock who raises an impious question against his dictatorial assertions. But if your neighbor,—near whom you have been living all your life, whose word stands pre-eminent in all matters of business, into whose care you would place your wife or your daughter, and to whose honor you would leave it to execute your last will and testament, in behalf of the loved ones,—was to tell you that he had seen a ghost, and calmly relate the incident with the proofs and the tests, you would be very likely to laugh in his face, and tell the next person you met that you were afraid neighbor so-and-so was a little weak in the upper story, or was telling what was not true.