F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 65
that can be easily rectified. In a word, there's much ado about
nothing in the whole of it. Little affairs of this kind are incident
to fashionable society all over the world! The lady being only
scratched, is more frightened than hurt. Nobody is killed; and if
there were, why killings are become so fashionable, that if the
killed be not a gentleman, nobody thinks anything of it," he
continues. And Mr. Soloman being an excellent diplomatist, does,
with the aid of the hostess, her twelve masters of ceremony, her
beadle, and two policemen, forthwith bring the house to a more
orderly condition. But night has rolled into the page of the past,
the gray dawn of morning is peeping in at the half-closed windows,
the lights burning in the chandeliers shed a pale glow over the
wearied features of those who drag, as it were, their languid bodies
to the stifled music of unwilling slaves. And while daylight seems
modestly contending with the vulgar glare within, there appears
among the pale revellers a paler ghost, who, having stalked thrice
up and down the hall, preserving the frigidity and ghostliness of
the tomb, answering not the questions that are put to him, and
otherwise deporting himself as becometh a ghost of good metal, is
being taken for a demon of wicked import. Now he pauses at the end
of the hall, faces with spectre-like stare the alarmed group at the
opposite end, rests his left elbow on his scythe-staff, and having
set his glass on the floor, points to its running sands warningly
with his right forefinger. Not a muscle does he move. "Truly a
ghost!" exclaims one. "A ghost would have vanished before this,"
whispers another. "Speak to him," a third responds, as the musicians
are seen to pale and leave their benches. Madame Flamingo, pale and
weary, is first to rush for the door, shrieking as his ghostship
turns his grim face upon her. Shriek follows shriek, the lights are
put out, the gray dawn plays upon and makes doubly frightful the
spectre. A Pandemonium of shriekings and beseechings is succeeded by