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Fawkner's habitat for some time before he died. Fawkner when questioned on the subject, met it with an indignant denial. " H o ! H o ! take m y word Batman would not be such a fool to play m e such a trick, even if he could ; and if he tried it on with m e I would m a k e it w a r m for the fellow." T h e comfortable old house in Victoria Parade, at the corner of Fitzroy Street, was erected at a very early date for Mr. Arthur K e m m i s , one of the primitive merchants. H e resided there only for a few months, when he died ; and I have heard it solemnly asseverated that the place was haunted until M r . (now Sir A.) Michie moved into it, and whilst there delivered a lecture on "Ghosts," in the Melbourne Mechanics' Institute. T h e presumed cause of the ghostly disappearance is the exorcising influence generated by the intellectual chemicals employed in the preparation of the lecture. There is a popular superstition amongst believers in the supernatural, viz.—that ghosts particularly affect places of Divine worship, and consequently the old churches of St. James, St. Francis, the "Wesleyan Chapel (once where the Bank of Australasia is now), and thefirstScots' Kirk, had, in vulgar belief, their nightly disembodied visitants through the appearance of the several individuals w h o first officiated as clerks in these " holy places." Faint shimmering lights, it was said, used to be seen there, and whilst the attendant at the R o m a n Catholic Church loudly intoned a Litany, the others exercised their vocal powers in appropriate selections of hymnody. T h e most searching enquiry, however, could never elicit anything but the vaguest hearsay testimony on the subject. It used to be also stated and believed by not a few, that a ghost would occasionally m a k e a night-run on the banks, unlock the safes, roll out the cash on the counter, and amuse himself as a teller by rattling the gold, silver, and coppers, without ever paying or receiving any current coin of the realm. T h e old Union Bank, at the north-west corner of Queen and Little Flinders Streets, was reputedly the most often so patronised whilst it was under the management of the late M r . William Highett. In a conversation one day with him he assured m e that the only nocturnal disturbance he ever heard there, was on an occasion when some depredators in thefleshdisplaced a number of bricks from the southern wall of the building, and would have succeeded in removing the bank safe with all the working cash, had he not been awakened by the noise, and appeared inside on the spot in the nick of time to spoil "their little game." T h e early newspaper offices were particularly susceptible of spirituous influences, even of a more ardent flavour than the distillation of a cemetery, and it could not therefore be expected that such establishments should be disregarded in the spiritual world. T h e three primary journals—the Gazette, Patriot, and Herald, were consequently "ghosted," notwithstanding the efforts of "the Father of the Chapel" attached to each, to banish such inscrutable influences. T h e Gazette office was near the (now) Union Bank in Collins Street, and the haunter (or rather hauntress) was a white lady costumed in the style of an Irish Banshee, w h o was supposed to have "set her cap" (more properly her long undulating curls), at M r . George Arden, the sprightly, smart pungent-penned editor. But her modesty prevented her ever appearing when he was there. T h e newspapers then were bi-weekly; so the editorial room was two-thirds of its time, especially at night, deserted. It was then she appeared on the tapis, overhauled Arden's writing-desk, sat in his chair, and read his letters. A veteran compositor, known as "Jupiter" Brown, declared that he often saw her. H e used to be m u c h about there at all hours, and she would glide quietly past him with as scant ceremony as if he had no existence, strike a light, not with a match-box as now, but by dipping the top of a lucifer in a small acid bottle, the primitive mode, quietly sit down, and set to work. H e declared he had often followed, with the determination of questioning the unbidden intruder; but when he arrived within talking distance, some spell gave his tongue such a twist, and so benumbed his brain, as to render him unable to carry out his intention. W h e n afterwards asked to account for his repeated faint-heartedness he curtly and invariably answered with a Latin quotation, the only one he was ever k n o w n to know or e m p l o y — " Obstupui, steteruntque coma, et vox faucibus hazsit." Old "Jupiter" often put m e off with this illogical platitude, and it was m y fixed conviction that, as there was a tavern known as the Lmperial close by, where Brown was a frequent visitor, as Minerva is said to have sprung from the head of the Olympian Zeus, so by the aid of Bacchus the White Lady of Arden was the imaginary cerebral offspring of the Melbourne Jupiter.