“Calm yourself, calm yourself,” I said.  “It is too bad—­it is certainly too bad, but then I had not supposed that you would much mind such matters situated as you are.”

“Well, my dear sir, I do mind them.  My pride is hurt, and my comfort is impaired—­destroyed, I might say.  I will state my case—­I will put it to you in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me,” said the poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his shroud back, as if he were clearing for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty and festive air very much at variance with the grave character of his position in life—­so to speak—­and in prominent contrast with his distressful mood.

“Proceed,” said I.

“I reside in the shameful old graveyard a block or two above you here, in this street—­there, now, I just expected that cartilage would let go! —­third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine with a string, if you have got such a thing about you, though a bit of silver wire is a deal pleasanter, and more durable and becoming, if one keeps it polished—­to think of shredding out and going to pieces in this way, just on account of the indifference and neglect of one’s posterity!”—­and the poor ghost grated his teeth in a way that gave me a wrench and a shiver —­for the effect is mightily increased by the absence of muffling flesh and cuticle.  “I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty years; and I tell you things are changed since I first laid this old tired frame there, and turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep, with a delicious sense upon me of being done with bother, and grief, and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, forever and ever, and listening with comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton’s work, from the startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home-delicious!  My!  I wish you could try it to-night!” and out of my reverie deceased fetched me a rattling slap with a bony hand.

“Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there, and was happy.  For it was out in the country then—­out in the breezy, flowery, grand old woods, and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels capered over us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the birds filled the tranquil solitude with music.  Ah, it was worth ten years of a man’s life to be dead then!  Everything was pleasant.  I was in a good neighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the best families in the city.  Our posterity appeared to think the world of us.  They kept our graves in the very best condition; the fences were always in faultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or whitewashed, and were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty or decayed; monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the rose-bushes and shrubbery trimmed, trained, and free