Charles Dickens

“ Another night, they turned out again, and had a chimney-cowl off. Another night, they cut a sobbing and gulping water-pipe away. Another night, they found out something else. On several occasions, they both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective bedroom windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to "overhaul" something mysterious in the garden.
The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed anything. All we know was, if any one's room were haunted, no one looked the worse for it. ”

“ Belinda Hates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the picture room. She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness, and "goes in"—to use an expression of Alfred's—for Woman's Mission, Woman's Rights, Womans's Wrongs, and every thing that is woman's with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. ”

“ You can fill any house with noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your nervous system.
I repeat: the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) , were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-triggers. The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. ”

“ I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant northern lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been asleep at all;—upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had, through the night—as that opposite man always has—several legs too many, and all of them too long. ”

“ Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful resources, was chief cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable curries. My sister was pastry-cook and confectioner. Starling and I were cook's mate, turn and turn about, and on special occasions the chief cook "pressed " Mr. Beaver. We had a great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within, and there was no ill-humor or misunderstanding among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at least one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed. ”

“ I imparted my secret to him because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had burst out ringing; and because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity. The Odd Girl's case was exactly similar. ”

“ Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever given, or taken! None."
This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired, every night at ten o'clock, to his bed over the coach house, with no other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I had put myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering. ”

“ And in respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being within reach of woman than our civilization has as yet assigned to her, don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural oppressors of your sex ”

“ I content myself with remarking that it is familiaily known to every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful experience, that it is as well established and as common a state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted, and that it is one of the first elements, above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and strictly looked for, and separated from, any question of this kind. ”

“ There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it is) , there was nothing in the house; what there was, was broken; the last people must have lived like pigs; what could the meaning of the landlord be? ”

“ I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun? On his saying, "Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her," I begged the favor of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine. ”

“ This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see, had been took with fits and held down in 'em, after seeing the hooded woman. ”

“ That done, and every bedroom, and indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on a gypsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting party, or were shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumors concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B., with others still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table ”

“ 'Evil communications corrupt good manners." ”

“ Bless you, Perkins wouldn't go a-nigh the place. No !" observed the young man, with considerable feeling; "he an't over wise, an't Perkins, but he nu't such a fool as that."
(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins's knowing better.)
"Who is—or who was—the hooded woman with the owl? Do you know?"
"Well!" said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he scratched his head with the other, "they say, in general, that she was murdered, and the howl he 'ooted the while." ”