pathic love to Miriam Foote, need simply drop to sleep, on a certain night, with a strong determination to send his phantasm to the young woman with an eloquent plea of affection. That was all. It was not even necessary for him to furnish the general substance, introduction, or any portion of this glowing address. He need simply specify that it should be passionate and rich in verbal color,—ordering a proposal much as he would a dinner at a first-class hotel, with perfect confidence that at the proper time it would be served in proper form. To be sure, this method of wooing was not in strict accordance with the traditional etiquette of such affairs. It might even be considered that this proposal by a sort of phantasmal proxy was hardly fair to the object of the experiment. A ghost is, after all, but a ghost, whether it be attached to a bodily tenement or be simply a spirit at large, and even the most heavenly minded young woman might cherish a prejudice in favor of a fleshly lover. On the other hand, however, the choice lay not between two methods of wooing, but between this and none at all; and how easy, how delightful a method of making a proposal of marriage. It could all be performed, like a painful surgical operation, during merciful sleep. Then the lover when next he met the lady in his every-day person would know by her manner whether she had accepted or rejected him. The more Dr. Amsden considered this fascinating project the more trivial seemed his scruples against its fulfilment. Indeed, he asked himself judicially, was it not a fundamental doctrine of metaphysics that only the soul was real, and so-called matter was simply the shadow cast by the spirit? This being the case, his vulgarly named ghost was in reality no ghost at all, while his bodily presence was the real phantasm.
Having arrived at this comfortable, though to the lay mind slightly abstruse, conclusion, Amsden wavered no longer. "I will do it," he said, jumping to his feet. "I will do it to-night—or—no, a few days must be given to subduing the flesh and concentrating the energies of the subjective mind. On Saturday evening, at the time of my regular weekly call, I will make an end to this painful uncertainty. Though I cannot but hope that she looks upon my suit with favor, I shall never dare to broach the subject of love openly in the flesh. My ghost—or, at least,
