Speaker 1: A Ghost's Tail by Mark Twain. I took a large
room far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose
upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came.
The place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs,
to solitude and silence. I seemed groping among the tombs
and invading the privacy of the dead. That first night,
I climbed up to my quarters for the first time
in my life, A superstitious dread came over me, and
as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and
an invisible cobweb swung its lazy woof in my face
and clung there. I shuddered as one who had encountered
a phantom. I was glad enough when I reached my
room and locked out the mold and the darkness. A
cheery fire was burning and the great, and I sat
down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For
two hours I sat there, thinking of by gone times,
recalling old scenes and summoning half forgotten faces out of
the mists of the past, listening in fancy to voices
that long ago grew silent for all time, and to
once familiar songs that nobody sings now, And as my
reverie softened down to a saddern sadder pathos, the shrieking
of the winds outside softened to a wail, The angry
beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a
tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the
street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated
straggler died away in the distance and left no sound behind.
The fire had burned low, a sense of loneliness crept
over me. I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about
the room, doing stealthily what I had to do, as
if I were environed by sleeping enemies, whose slumbers it
would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed
and lay listening to the rain and wind and the
faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep.
I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know.
All at once I found myself awake and filled with
a shuddering expectancy. All was still all but my own heart.
I could hear it beat Presently. The bed clothes began
to slip away, slowly toward the foot of the bed,
as if someone were pulling them. I could not stir,
I could not speak. Still, the blanket slipped deliberately away
till my breast was uncovered. Then, with a great effort,
I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, listened, waited.
Once more, that steady pull began, and once more I
lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast
was naked again. At last, I roused my energies and
snatched the covers back to their place, and held them
with a strong grip. I waited by and by, I
felt a faint hug, and took a fresh grip. The
tug strengthened to a steady strain. It grew stronger and stronger.
My whole parted, and for the third time, the blanket
slid away. I grown, an answering grown came from the
foot of the bed. Beaded drops of sweat stood upon
my forehead. I was more dead than alive. Presently I
heard a heavy footstep in my room, the step of
an elephant. It seemed to me it was not like
anything human, but it was moving from me. There was
relief in that I heard it approach the door, pass
out without moving bolt or lock, and wander away among
the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till they
creaked again as it passed, and then silence rained once more.
When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, this
is a dream, simply a hideous dream. And so I
lay thinking it over until I convinced myself that it
was a dream. And then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips,
and I was happy again. I got up and struck
a light, and when I found that the locks and
bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing
laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips.
I took my pipe and lit it, and I was
just sitting down before the fire, when down went the
pipe out of my nerveless fingers. The blood forsook my cheeks,
and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp.
In the ashes on the hearth, side by side with
my own bare footprint was another so vast that, in comparison,
mind was but an infants. Then I had had a visitor,
and the elephant tread was explained. I put out the
light and returned to bed poles with THEA. I lay
a long time, peering into the darkness and listening. Then
I heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of
a heavy body across the floor. Then the thrown down
of the body, and the shaking of my windows in
response to the concussion. In distant parts of the building,
I heard the muffled slamming of doors. I heard, at
intervals stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among the corridors,
and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these noises approached
my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the
clanking of chains. Faintly, and remote passages listened while the
clanking grew near, while it weirdly climbed the stairways, marking
each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell
with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step. As the
goblin that bore it advanced, I heard muttered sentences, half
uttered screams that seemed smothered violently, and the swish of
invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became
conscious that my chamber was invaded, that I was not alone.
I heard sighs and breathings about my bed and mysterious whisperings.
Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the
ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment,
and then dropped two of them upon my face and
one upon the pillow. They spattered liquidly and felt warm.
Intuition told me that they had turned to gouts of
blood as they fell. I needed no light to satisfy
myself of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous
and white, uplifted hands floating bodiless in the air, floating
a moment, and then disappeared. The whispering ceased, and the
voices and the sounds and all a solemn stillness followed.
I waited and listened. I felt that I must have
light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly
raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came
in contact with a clammy hand. All strength went from me, apparently,
and I fell back like a stricken invalid. Then I
heard the rustle of a garment. It seemed to pass
to the door and go out. When everything was still
once more, I crept out of bed, sick, and feeble,
and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as
if it were aged with one hundred years. The light
brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down
and fell into a dreary contemplation of that great footprint
in the ashes. By and by, its outlines began to
waver and grow dim. I glanced up, and the broad
gas flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment
I heard that elephant teen tread again. I noted its approach,
nearer and nearer along the musty halls, and dimmer and
dim The light waned. The tread reached my very door
and paused. The light had dwindled to a sickly blue,
and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight.
The door did not open, and yet I felt a
faint gust of air fan my cheek, and presently was
conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched
it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the thing. Gradually,
its cloudy folds took shape. An arm appeared, then legs,
then a body, and last a great sad face looked
out of the vapor, stripped of its filmy housens, naked,
muscular and calmly, the majestic Cardiff giant loomed above me.
I said, why is it nobody but you? Do you
know I have been scared to death for the last
two or three hours. Oh, I am most honestly glad
to see you. I wish I had a chair here here.
Don't try to sit down in that thing. But it
was too late. He was in it before I could
stop him, and down he went. I never saw a
chair shivered, so in my life, stop, stop, you'll ruin it.
Too late Again there was another crash, and another chair
was resolved into its original elements, confound it. Haven't you
got any judgment at all? Do you want to ruin
all the furniture on the place? Here? Here? You petrified fool?
But it was no use. Before I could arrest him,
he had sat down on the bed and it was
a melancholy ruin. Now what sort of a way is
that to do? First you come lumbering about the place,
bringing a legion of vegamond goblins along with you to
worry me to death, and then when I overlook an
indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by
cultivated people, except in a respectable theater, and not even
there if the nudity were of your sex. You repay
me by reckoning all the furniture you can find to
sit down on. And why will you? You damage yourself
as much as you do me. You have broken off
the end of your spinal column and littered up the
floor with chips of your arms, till the place looks
like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
You are big enough to know better. Well, I will
not break anymore furniture. What am I to rule? I
have not had a chunced to sit down for a
centurey And the tears came into his eyes, poor devil,
I said, I should not have been so harsh with you,
and you are an orphan too, no doubt. But sit
down on the floor here. Nothing else can stand your weight,
And besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up
there above me. I want you down where I can
perch on this high Countain house stool and gossip with
you face to face. So he sat down on the
floor and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw
one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my
sitz bath on his head helmet fashion, and made himself
picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed his ankles while I
renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honeycombed bottoms of
his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth. What is the
matter with the bottom of your feet and the back
of your legs that they are gouged up so infernel
shild blades. I caught them clear up to the back
of my head and roosting out there Undernoule's form. But
I love the place. I love it as one loves
his old home. Hmm. There is no peace for me
like the piece I feel when I am there. We
talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed
that he looked tired and spoke of it tired, He said, well,
I should think so, and now I will tell you
all about it, since you have treated me so well.
I am the spirit of the petrified man that lies
across the street there in the museum. I am the
ghost of the cartiff giant. I can have no rest,
no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. Now,
what was the most natural thing for me to do
to make men satisfy this wish, terrify them into it,
haunt the place where the body lay. So I haunted
the museum night after night. I even got other spirits
to help me, but it did no good, for nobody
ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred
to me to come over the way and haunt this
place a little. I felt that if I ever got
a hearing, I must succeed, for I had the most
efficient company that perdition could furnish. Night after night, we
have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging the chains, groaning, whispering,
tramping up and downstairs till to tell you the truth,
I am almost worn out. But when I saw a
light in your room tonight, I roused my energies again
and went at it with a deal of the old freshness.
But I'm tired out, entirely fagged out. Oh give me,
I beseech you give me some hope. I lit off
my perch in a burst of excitement and exclaimed, this
transcends everything, everything that ever did occur. Why, you poor
blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing.
You have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself. The
real Cardiff Giant is in Albany. A fact, the original
fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully duplicated and exhibited in New
York as the only genuine Cardiff Giant, to the unspeakable
disgust of the owners of the real colossus at the
very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at
a museum. Is Olbany confounded, don't you know your own remains?
I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of
pitiable humiliation overspread a countenance before the petrified man rose
slowly to his feet and said, honestly, is that true?
As true as I am sitting here. He took the
pot from his mouth and laid it on the mantle,
then stood irresolute a moment unconsciously from old habit, thrust
in his hands where his pantaloon pockets should have been,
and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast, and finally saying, well,
I never felt so absurd before. The petrified man has
sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended
by selling its own ghost. My son, if there is
any charity left in your heart for a poor, friendless
phantom like me. Don't let this get out. How you
would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself.
I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step,
down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and
felt sorry that he was gone poor fellow, and sorrier
still that he had carried off my red blanket and
my bathtub. End of a ghost's tell