Harriet Beecher Stowe

“ Wal, it’s kind o’ scary like to be shet up in a lone house with all natur’ a kind o’ breakin’ out, and goin’ on so, and the snow a comin’ down so thick ye can’t see ‘cross the street, and the wind a pipin’ and a squeelin’ and a rumblin’ and a tumblin’ fust down this chimney and then down that. ”

“ Wal, this ’ere story I’m a goin’ to tell you was told me by Cinthy Pendleton. There ain’t a more respectable gal, old or young, than Cinthy nowheres. She lives over to Sherburne now, and I hear tell she’s sot up a manty-makin’ business; but then she used to do tailorin’ in Oldtown. She was a member o’ the church, and a good Christian as ever was. Wal, ye see, Quassia she got Cinthy to come up and spend a week to the Cap’n Brown house, a doin’ taitorin’ and a fixin’ over his close: ‘twas along toward the fust o’ March. ”

“ The front entry wa’n’t very light in the day time, and in the storm, come five o’clock, it was so dark that all you could see was jest a gleam o’ somethin’, and two or three times when she started to go up stairs she see a soft white suthin’ that seemed goin’ up before her, and she stopped with her heart a beatin’ like a trip-hammer, and she sort o’ saw it go up and along the entry to the cap’n’s door, and then it seemed to go right through, ’cause the door didn’t open.
‘Wal, Cinthy says she to old Quassia, says she, “Is there anybody lives in this house but us?” ”

“ I tell you, it sort o’ sets a feller thinkin’ o’ the three great things,—death, judgment, and etarnaty; and I don’t care who the folks is, nor how good they be, there’s times when they must be feelin’ putty consid’able solemn.
‘Wal, Cinthy she said she kind o’ felt so along, and she bed a sort o’ queer feelin’ come over her as if there was somebody or somethin’ round the house more’n appeared. ”