The Ghost of Doctor Harris by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I'm afraid this ghost story will
bear a very faded aspect when transferred to paper. Whatever effect it had on
you, whatever charm it retains in your memory, is perhaps to be attributed
to the favorable circumstances under which it was originally told. We were sitting,
i remember, late in the evening in your drawing room, where the lights
of the chandelier were so muffled as to produce a delicious obscurity through which the
fire diffused a dim red glow in this rich twilight. The feelings of the
party had been properly attuned by some tales of English superstitioned, and the lady
of smith Hills Hall had just been describing that bloody footstep which marks the threshold
of her old mansion. When your Yankee guest, zealous for the honor of
his country and desirous of proving that his dead compatriots have the same ghostly privileges
as other dead people if they think it worth while to use them, began
a story of something wonderful that long ago happened to himself. Possibly in the
verbal narrative, he may have assumed a little more license than would be allowed
in a written record, for the sake of the artistic effect. He may
then have thrown in here and there a few slight circumstances which he will not
think it proper to retain in what he now puts forth as the sober statement
of a veritable fact. A good many years ago, it must be as
many as fifteen, perhaps more, and while I was still a bachelor,
I resided at Boston in the United States. In that city there is a
large and long established library styled the Athenaeum, connected with which is the reading
room, well supplied with foreign and American periodicals and newspapers. A splendid edifice
has since been erected by the proprietors of the institution, but at the period
I speak of, it was contained within a large old mansion, formerly the
town residence of an imminent citizen of Boston. The reading room, a spacious
hall with a group of the LaYaka on at one end and the Belvidere apollo
at the other, was frequented by not a few elderly merchants retired from business,
by clergymen and lawyers, and by such literary men as we had amongst
us. These good people were mostly old, leisurely and somnolent, and used
to nod and doze for hours together with the newspapers before them, ever and
anon, recovering themselves so far as to read a word or two of the
politics of the day, sitting, as it were, on the boundary of
the land of dreams, and having little to do with this world except through
the newspapers, which they so tenaciously grasped. One of these worthies whom I
occasionally saw there was the Reverend doctor Harris, a Unitarian clergyman of considerable repute
and eminence. He was very far advanced in life, no less than eighty
years old, and probably more, and he resided, I think, at
Dorchester, a suburban village in the immediate vicinity of Boston. I had never
been personally acquainted with the good old clergyman, but had heard of him all
of my life as a noteworthy man, so that when he was first pointed
out to me, I looked at him with a certain specialty of attention,
and always subsequently eyed him with a degree of interest whenever I happened to see
him at the Athenaeum or elsewhere. He was a small, withered and firm
but brisk old gentleman with snow white hair, a somewhat stooping figure, but
yet a remarkable alacrity of movement. I remember it was in the street when
I first noticed him. The doctor was plodding along with a staff, but
turned smartly about on being addressed by the gentleman who was with me, and
responded with a good deal of a vivacity. Who is he? I inquired,
as soon as he had passed. The Reverend Doctor Harris of Dorchester,
replied, my companion, And from that time I often saw him and never
forgot his aspect. His especial haunt was the Athenaeum. There I used to
see him daily, and almost always with the newspaper the Boston Post, which
was the leading journal of the Democratic Party in the Northern States. As old
Doctor Harris had been a noted Democrat during his more active life, it was
a very natural thing that he should still like to read the Boston Post.
There, his reverend figure was accustomed to sit day after day in the self
same chair by the fireside, and by degrees, seeing him there so constantly
I began to look towards him as I entered the reading room, and felt
that a kind of acquaintance, at least on my part, was established.
Not that I had any reason, as long as this venerable person remained in
the body, to suppose that he had ever noticed me. But by some
subtle connection, the small, white haired and firm yet vivacious figure of an
old clergyman became associated with my idea and recollection of the place. One day,
especially about noon, as was generally his hour, I am perfectly certain
that I had seen this figure of old doctor Harris, and taken my customary
note of him, although I remember nothing in his appearance at all different from
what I had seen on many previous occasions. But that very evening a friend
said to me, did you hear that old doctor Harris is dead? No,
I said, very quietly, and it cannot be true, for I
saw him at the atheneum today. You must be mistaken, rejoined my friend.
He is certainly dead, and confirmed the fact with such special circumstance that
I could no longer doubt it. My friend has often sense assured me that
I seemed much startled at the intelligence, But as well as I can recollect,
I believe that I was very little disturbed, if at all, but
set down the apparition as a mistake of my own, or perhaps the interposition
of a familiar idea into the place and amid the circumstances with which I had
been accustomed to associate it. The next day, as I ascended the steps
of the Athenaeum, I remember thinking within myself, well, I never shall
see old doctor Harris again. With this thought in my mind, as I
opened the door of the reading room, I glanced towards the spot and share
where doctor Harris usually sat, and there, to my astonishment, sat the
gray and firm figure of the deceased doctor, reading the newspaper as was his
wont his own death must have been recorded that very morning in that very newspaper.
I have no recollection of being greatly discomposed at the moment, nor indeed
that I felt any extraordinary emotion whatever. Probably, if ghosts were in the
habit of coming among us, they would coincide with the ordinary train of affairs
and melt into them so familiarly that we should not be shocked at their presence
at all events. So it was in this instance I looked through the newspapers
as usual, and turned over the periodical, taking about as much interest in
their contents as at other times. Once or twice, no doubt, I
may have lifted my eyes from the page to look again at the venerable doctor,
who ought then to have been lying in his coffin, dressed out for
the grave, but who felt such interest in the Boston Post as to come
back from the other world to read it in the morning after his death.
One might have supposed that he would have cared more about the novelties with a
Sphere to which he had just been introduced than about the politics he had left
behind him. The apparition took no notice of me, nor behaved otherwise in
any respect that on any previous day nobody but myself seemed to notice him.
And yet the old gentleman round about the fire beside his chair were his lifelong
acquaintances, who were perhaps thinking of his death, and who in a day
or two would deem it a proper courtesy to attend his funeral. I have
forgotten how the ghost of doctor Harris took its departure from the Athenae on this
occasion, or in fact, whether the ghost or I went first. This
equanimity and almost indifference on my part. The careless way in which I glanced
at so singular a mystery and left it aside is what now surprises me as
much as anything else in the affair. From that time, for a long
while thereafter, for weeks at least, and I know not, but for
months, I used to see the figure of doctor Harris quite as frequently as
before his death. It grew to be so common that at length I regarded
the venerable defunct no more than any other of the old fogies who basted before
the fire and dozed over the newspapers. It was but a ghost, nothing
but thin air, not tangible nor appreciable, nor demanding any attention from a
man of flesh and blood. I cannot recollect any cold shudderings, any awe,
any repugnance, any emotion whatsoever, such as would be suitable and decorous
on beholding a visit from the spiritual world. It is very strange. But
as such is the truth. It appears excessively odd to me now that I
did not adopt such means as I readily might to ascertain whether the appearance had
solid substance or was merely gaseous. In vapoury. I might have brushed against
him, have jostled his chair, or have trodden accidentally on his poor old
toes. I might have snatched the Boston Post, unless that were an apparition
too out of his shadowy hands. I might have tested him in a hundred
ways, But I did nothing of the kind. Perhaps I was loth to
destroy the illusion and to rob myself so good of a ghost story which might
probably have been explained in some very commonplace way. Perhaps, after all,
I had a secret dread of the old phenomenon, and therefore kept within my
limits with an instinctive caution which I mistook for indifference. But as it may,
here is the fact I saw the figure day after day for a considerable
space of time, and took no pains to ascertain whether it was a ghost
or no. I never, to my knowledge, saw him come into the
reading room or depart from it. There sat Doctor Harris in his customary chair,
and I can say little else about him. After a certain period,
I really know not how long I began to notice or to fancy a peculiar
regard in the old gentleman's aspect towards myself. I sometimes found him gazing at
me, and unless I deceived myself, there was a sort of expectancy in
his face. His spectacles, I think, were shoved up so that his
bleared eyes might meet my own. Had he been a living man, I
should have flattered myself that good Doctor Harris was, for some reason or other
interested in me and desirous of a personal acquaintance. Being a ghost and amenable
to ghostly laws, it was natural to conclude that he was waiting to be
spoken to before delivering whatever message he wished to impart. But if so,
the ghost had shown the bad judgment common among the spiritual brotherhood, both as
regarded the place of interview and the person whom he had selected as the recipient
of his communications. In the reading room of the Athenaeum, conversation is strictly
forbidden, and I could not have addressed the apparition without drawing the instant notice
and indignant frowns of the slumbrous old gentleman around me. I myself, too,
at that time, was as shy as any ghost, and followed the
ghost's rule never to speak first. And what an absurd figure should I have
made solemnly and awfully addressing what must have appeared in the eyes of all the
rest of the company an empty chair. Besides, I had never been introduced
to Doctor Harris, dead or alive, and I am not aware that social
regulations are to be abrogated by the accidental fact of one of the parties having
crossed the imperceptible line which separates the other party from the spiritual world. If
ghosts throw off all conventionalism among themselves, it does not therefore follow that it
can be safely dispensed with by those who are still hampered with flesh and blood.
For such reasons as these, and reflecting moreover that the deceased doctor might
burden me with some disagreeable task with which I had no business nor wish to
be concerned, I stubbornly resolved to have nothing to say to him. To
this determination I adhered, and not a syllable ever passed between the ghost and
Doctor Harris and myself. To the best of my recollection, I never observed
the old gentleman either enter the reading room or depart from it, or move
from his chair, or lay down the newspaper, or exchange a look with
any person in the company, unless it were myself. He was not by
any means, invariably in his place in the evening, for instance, though
often at the reading room myself never saw him, it was at the brightest
noontide that I used to behold him, sitting within the most comfortable focus of
the glowing fire, as real and lifelike as any object, except that he
was so very old and of an ashen complexion as any other in the room.
After a long while of this strange intercourse, if such it can be
called, I remember once, at least, and I know not but oftener,
a sad, wistful, disappointed gaze which the ghost fixed upon me from
beneath his spectacles, a melancholy look of hopelessness, which, if my heart
had not been as hard as a paving stone, I could hardly have withstood.
But I did withstand it. And I think I saw him no more
after this last appealing look, which still dwells in my memory, as perfectly
as while my own eyes were encountering the dim and bleared eyes of the ghost.
And whenever I recall this strange passage of my life, I see the
small, old, withered figure of doctor Harris, sitting in his accustomed chair.
The Boston Post in his hand, his spectacles shoved upwards, and gazing
at me as I closed the door of the reading room with that wistful,
appealing, hopeless, helpless look. I have only to add that it was
not until long after I had ceased to encounter the ghost that I became aware
how very odd and strange the whole affair had been. And even now I
am made sensible of its strangeness, chiefly by the wonder and incredulity of those
to whom I tell the story. End of the Ghost of Doctor Harris by Nathaniel Hawthorne