353
THE BLACK CHAMBER.
AN ANECDOTE FROM THE GERMAN.
In the small town of D, in which I resided for some years, we had established an amusing periodical work, of which the physician of the town, (Dr. Augustus Barmann,) the magistrate, (Mr. Wermuth,) and myself, were the conductors. Mr. Wermuth furnished the learned articles, Barmann the elegant, and I those which were neither the one nor the other, or both, as occasion warranted. In the evenings we met to arrange the choicest subjects for our own publication, and to discuss and dispute the comparative merits of others;—one of these, (the Universal Advertiser,) had just fallen under my censure for publishing an absurd ghost story; and one evening, as the Doctor and myself were alone, expecting Wermuth to join us, I employed the idle time in condemning the stupid Advertiser, and its more stupid editor, not only for the trash which he had forced upon us, but the insult offered to our understandings by the solemn and dogmatical tone in which he had told the story. I was not much surprised, though considerably amused, to observe that Barmann took up the cudgels for the editor, and condemned the over-wise (as he called the unbelievers) for pretending to know so much more than their betters; “You think,” added he warmly, “that you only are qualified to look upon nature’s fingers, and ascertain exactly how much she can do with them. You chatter, and chatter on, till you weary your hearers to death; and truly, the less you understand of a thing, the more you have to say about it.”
“But, in the name of common sense,” demanded I, “who can patiently listen to such bare-faced stuff as this about walking skeletons, or grant any ghostly dignity to the spiritual Gertrude, who walks about, lights candles, and allows herself to be touched as freely as any corporeal chamber-maid!”
“I repeat to you again,” said Barmann, “that we know so little of what nature can do, that”“I am almost inclined to believe,” said I, “that you are a bit of a ghost seer yourself. Did you ever, at any time, really stumble upon a spectre?”
“Although I do not intend to be posted for a visionary, Frederick,” replied Barmann, “yet I will acknowledge to you that a circumstance somewhat similar to this of the Grey
