heavy gale the night after we left the ice, but so glad were we all to get clear of it, that I heard no complaints about rough weather. It cleared away beautifully towards morning, and we were all on the deck admiring the clear water, and the fantastic shapes of the water-washed icebergs. All hands were in high spirits; the gale had blown in the right direction, and in a few hours we should be in Lievely. The rocks of its land-locked harbor were already in sight. We were discussing our news by anticipation, when the man in the crow's nest cried out: "A brig in the harbor!" and the next minute, before we had time to congratulate each other on the chance of sending letters home, that she had hoisted American colors - a delicate compliment, we thought, on the part of our friends, the Danes. I believe our captain was about to return it, when, to our surprise, she hoisted another flag, the veritable one which had gone out with the Advance, bearing the name of Mr. Henry Grinnell. At the same moment two boats were seen rounding the point, and pulling towards us. Did they contain our lost friends? Yes; the sailors had settled that. "Those are Yankees, sir; no Danes ever feathered their oars that way," said an old whaler to me. For those who had friends among the missing party, the few minutes that followed were of bitter anxiety; for the men in the boats were longbearded and weather-beaten; they had strange, wild costumes; there was no possibility of recognition. Dr. Kane, standing upright in the stern of the first boat, with his spy-glass slung round his neck, was the first identified; then the big form of Mr. Brooks; in another moment all hands of them were on board of us. It was curious to watch the effects of the excitement in different people. the intense quietude of some, the boisterous delight of others; how one man would become intensely loquacious, another would do nothing but laugh, and a third would oreep away to some out-of-the-way corner, as if he were afraid of showing how he felt. How hungry they all were for news, and how eagerly they tore open the home letters-most of them, poor fellows, had pleasant tidings, and all were prepared to make the best of bad ones. We were in the harbor, with a fleet of kayacks dancing in welcome around and behind us, before the greet

ings were half ended, for they repeated themselves over and over again. Our old friend, Mr. Olrik, was with the new comers, and as happy as the rest. His hospitality, when we reached the shore, was absolutely boundless; and his house and table were always at our service. Altogether, I never passed three more delightful days than those last days at Lievely. Balls every night; feasts and junketings every day; and, pleasantest of all, those dear homelike tea-tables, with shining tea urn and clear, white sugar, round which we sat, waiting for the water to boil, and talking of Russia and the Czar, and the world outside the Circle; while Mrs. Olrik would look up from her worsted work, and the children pressed round me to see the horses and dogs I was drawing for them. It was enough to make one forget his red flannel shirt and rough Arctic rig: Melville Bay and the pack seemed fables. The Danish doctor, too, arrived from Fiskerness, a very intelligent gentleman, and we talked away bravely to him in bad Latin. He brought us a present of reindeer meat-a new dish for some of us, tasting like a cross between Virginia mountain mutton and our Pennsylvania red deer.

But our stay in Lievely ended. The propeller got up steam, and, taking our barque and the Danish brig Marianne in tow, steamed out of the harbor. All the inhabitants of the town were on the shore to see the last of us. Our visit had been as memorable an incident to them as to ourselves. Where ten dollars is a large marriage dower, Jack's liberality of expenditure seemed absolutely royal. There were moistened eyes among them, for they are essentially kind-hearted; and even the roar of our cannon, in answer to the Danish salute, though it resounded splendidly among the hills, was scarcely heeded, as they stood with folded arms watching as disappear in the distance. We carried Mr. Olrik quite out to sea before we bade him good-by; and it was not until the next morning that the Marianne cast loose.

We reached home without any incident worthy of note, except that the Esquimaux dogs we had on board did nothing but howl during the whole voyage-an amiable peculiarity, which still characterizes the single specimen of which I am at present the happy possessor. There he goes-I hear him now.

OR, ORIGINAL

MANIFESTATIONS.

and dusty, in the furthest corner of the old hopper-shaped girret, and set out with broken, be-crusted old purple vials and flasks, and a ghostly, dismantled old quarto, it seemed just such a necromantic little old table as might have belonged to Friar Bacon. Two plain features it had, significant of conjurations and charms-the circle and tripod; the slab being round, supported by a twisted little pillar, which, about a foot from the bottom, sprawled out into three crooked legs, terminating in three cloven feet. A very satanic-looking little old table, indeed.

In order to convey a better idea of it, some account may as well be given of the place it came from. A very old garret of a very old house in an oldfashioned quarter of one of the oldest towns in America. This garret had been closed for years. It was thought to be haunted; a rumor, I confess, which, however absurd (in my opinion), I did not, at the time of purchasing, very vehemently contradict; since, not improbably, it tended to place the property the more conveniently within my

means.

It was, therefore, from no dread of the reputed goblins aloft, that, for five years after first taking up my residence in the house, I never entered the garret. There was no special inducement. The roof was well slated, and thoroughly tight. The company that insured the house, waived all visitation of the garret; why, then, should the owner be overanxious about it ?-particularly, as he had no use for it, the house having ample room below. Then the key of the stairdoor leading to it was lost. The lock was a huge, old-fashioned one. To open it, a smith would have to be called; an annecessary trouble, I thought. Besides, though I had taken some care to keep my two daughters in ignorance of the rumor above-mentioned, still, they had, by some means, got an inkling of it, and were well enough pleased to see the entrance to the haunted ground closed. It might have remained so for a still longer time, had it not been for my accidentally discovering, in a corner of our glen-like, old, terraced garden, a VOL. VII. 30

rusty, which I, at once, concluded must belong to the garret-door-a supposition which, upon trial, proved correct. Now, the possession of a key to anything, at once provokes a desire to unlock and explore; and this, too, from a mere instinct of gratification, irrespective of any particular benefit to accrue.

Behold me, then, turning the rusty old key, and going up, alone, into the haunted garret.

It embraced the entire area of the mansion. Its ceiling was formed by the roof, showing the rafters and boards on which the slates were laid. The roof shedding the water four ways from a high point in the centre, the space beneath was much like that of a general's marquee-only midway broken by a labyrinth of timbers, for braces, from which waved innumerable cobwebs, that, of a summer's noon, shone like Bagdad tissues and gauzes. On every hand, some strange insect was seen, flying, or running, or creeping, on rafter and floor.

Under the apex of the roof was a rude, narrow, decrepit step-ladder, something like a Gothic pulpit-stairway, leading to a pulpit-like platform, from which a still narrower ladder-a sort of Jacob's ladder-led some ways higher to the lofty scuttle. The slide of this scuttle was about two feet square, all in one piece, furnishing a massive frame for a single small pane of glass, inserted into it like a bull's-eye. The light of the garret came from this sole source, filtrated through a dense curtain of cobwebs. Indeed, the whole stairs, and platform, and ladder, were festooned, and carpeted, and canopied with cobwebs; which, in funereal accumulations, hung, too, from the groined, murky ceiling, like the Carolina moss in the cypress forest. In these cobwebs, swung, as in aerial catacombs, myriads of all tribes of mummied insects.

Climbing the stairs to the platform, and pausing there, to recover my breath, a curious scene was presented. The sun was about half-way up. Piercing the little sky-light, it slopingly bored a rainbowed tunnel clear across the darkness of the garret. Here, mil

lions of butterfly moles were swarming. Against the sky-light itself, with a cymbal-like buzzing, thousands of insects clustered in a golden mob.

Wishing to shed a clearer light through the place, I sought to withdraw the scuttle-slide. But no sign of latch or hasp was visible. Only after long peering, did I discover a little padlock, imbedded, like an oyster at the bottom of the sea, amid matted masses of weedy webs, chrysalides, and insectivorous eggs. Brushing these away, I found it locked. With a crooked nail, I tried to pick the lock, when scores of small ants and flies, half-torpid, crawled forth from the key-hole, and, feeling the warmth of the sun in the pane, began frisking around me. Others appeared. Presently, I was overrun by them. As if incensed at this invasion of their retreat, countless bands darted up from below, beating about my head, like hornets. At last, with a sudden jerk, I burst open the scuttle. And ah! what a change. As from the gloom of the grave and the companionship of worms, man shall at last rapturously rise into the living greenness and glory immortal, so, from my cobwebbed old garret, I thrust forth my head into the balmy air, and found myself hailed by the verdant tops of great trees, growing in the little garden below-trees, whose leaves soared high above my topmost slate.

Refreshed by this outlook, I turned inward to behold the garret, now unwontedly lit up. Such humped masses of obsolete furniture. An old escritoir, from whose pigeon-holes sprang mice, and from whose secret drawers came subterranean squeakings, as from chipmuncks' holes in the woods; and brokendown old chairs, with strange carvings, which seemed fit to seat a conclave of conjurors. And a rusty, iron-bound chest, lidless, and packed full of mildewed old documents; one of which, with a faded red ink-blot at the end, looked as if it might have been the original bond that Doctor Faust gave to Mephistopheles. And, finally, in the least lighted corner of all, where was a profuse litter of indescribable old rubbish-among which was a broken telescope, and a celestial globe staved in— stood the little old table, one hoofed foot, like that of the Evil One,dimly revealed through the cobwebs. What a thick dust, half paste, had settled upon the

old vials and flasks; how their once liquid contents had caked, and how strangely looked the mouldy old book in the middle-Cotton Mather's “Magnolia."

Table and book I removed below, and had the dislocations of the one and the tatters of the other repaired. I resolved to surround this sad little hermit of a table, so long banished from genial neighborhood, with all the kindly influences of warm urns, warm fires, and warm hearts; little dreaming what all this warm nursing would hatch.

I was pleased by the discovery, that the table was not of the ordinary mahogany, but of apple-tree wood, which age had darkened nearly to walnut. It struck me as being quite an appropriate piece of furniture for our cedar-parlor-so called, from its being, after the old fashion, wainscoted with that wood. The table's round slab, or orb, was so contrived as to be readily changed from a horizontal to a perpendicular position; so that, when not in use, it could be snugly placed in a corner. For myself, wife, and two daughters, I thought it would make a nice little breakfast and tea-table. was just the thing for a whist table, too. And I also pleased myself with the idea, that it would make a famous readingtable.

It

In these fancies, my wife, for one, took little interest. She disrelished the idea of so unfashionable and indigent-looking a stranger as the table intruding into the polished society of more prosperous furniture. But when, after seeking its fortune at the cabinet-maker's, the table came home, varnished over, bright as a guinea, no one exceeded my wife in a gracious reception of it. It was advanced to an honorable position in the cedar-parlor.

But, as for my daughter Julia, she never got over her strange emotions upon first accidentally encountering the table. Unfortunately, it was just as I was in the act of bringing it down from the garret. Holding it by the slab, I was carrying it before me, one cobwebbed hoof thrust out, which weird object, at a turn of the stairs, suddenly touched my girl, as she was ascending; whereupon, turning, and seeing no living creature-for I was quite hidden behind my shield-seeing nothing, indeed, but the apparition of the Evil One's foot, as it seemed, she cried out, and there is no

knowing what might have followed, had I not immediately spoken.

From the impression thus produced, my poor girl, of a very nervous temperament, was long recovering. Superstitiously grieved at my violating the forbidden solitude above, she associated in her mind the cloven-footed table with

the reputed goblins there. She besought me to give up the idea of domesticating the table. Nor did her sister fail to add her entreaties. Between my girls there was a constitutional sympathy. But my matter-of-fact wife had now declared in the table's favor. She was not wanting in firmness and energy. To her, the prejudices of Julia and Anna were simply ridiculous. It was her maternal duty, she thought, to drive such weakness away. By degrees, the girls, at breakfast and tea, were induced to sit down with us at the table. Continual proximity was not without effect. By and by, they would sit pretty tranquilly, though Julia, as much as possible, avoided glancing at the hoofed feet, and, when at this I smiled, she would look at me seriously--as much as to say, Ah, papa, you, too, may yet do the same. She prophecied that, in connection with the table, something strange would yet happen. But I would only smile the more, while my wife indignantly chided.

Meantime, I took particular satisfaction in my table, as a night readingtable. At a ladies' fair, I bought me a beautifully worked reading-cushion, and, with elbow leaning thereon, and hand shading my eyes from the light, spent many a long hour-nobody by, but the queer old book I had brought down from the garret.

All went well, till the incident now about to be given--an incident, be it remembered, which, like every other in this narration, happened long before the time of the Fox girls."

It was late on a Saturday night in December. In the little old cedarparlor, before the little old apple-tree table, I was sitting up, as usual, alone. I had made more than one effort to get up and go to bed; but I could not. I was, in fact, under a sort of fascination. Somehow, too, certain reasonable opinions of mine seemed not so reasonable as before. I felt nervous. The truth was, that though, in my previous night-readings. Cotton Mather had but amused me, upon this particular night he terrified A thousand times I had laughed

me.

at such stories. Old wives' fables, I thought, however entertaining. But now, how different. They began to put on the aspect of reality. Now, for the first, time it struck me that this was no romantic Mrs. Radcliffe, who had written the "Magnolia ;" but a practical, hardworking, earnest, upright man, a learned doctor, too, as well as a good Christian and orthodox clergyman. What possible motive could such a man have to deceive? His style had all the plainness and unpoetic boldness of truth. In the most straightforward way, he laid before me detailed accounts of New England witchcraft, each important item corroborated by respectable townsfolk, and, of not a few of the most surprising, he himself had been eye-witness. Cotton Mather testified whereof he had seen. But, is it possible? I asked myself. Then I remembered that Dr. Johnson, the matter-of-fact compiler of a dictionary, had been a believer in ghosts, besides many other sound, worthy men. Yielding to the fascination, I read deeper and deeper into the night. At last, I found myself starting at the least chance sound, and yet wishing that it were not so very still.

A tumbler of warm punch stood by my side, with which beverage, in a moderate way, I was accustomed to treat myself every Saturday night; a habit, however, against which my good wife had long remonstrated; predicting that, unless I gave it up, I would yet die a miserable sot. Indeed, I may here mention that, on the Sunday mornings following my Saturday nights, I had to be exceedingly cautious how I gave way to the slightest impatience at any accidental annoyance; because such impatience was sure to be quoted against me as evidence of the melancholy consequences of over-night indulgence. As for my wife, she, never sipping punch, could yield to any little passing peevishness as much as she pleased.

But, upon the night in question, I found myself wishing that, instead of my usual mild mixture, I had concocted some potent draught. I felt the need of stimulus. I wanted something to hearten me against Cotton Matherdoleful, ghostly, ghastly Cotton Mather. I grew more and more nervous. thing but fascination kept me from fleeing the room. The candles burnt low, with long snuffs, and huge winding-sheets.

No