Richard Harris Barham

“ Why, Charles, do you think -- "
"I know not what to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers, nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow."
"Seaforth!" said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, "I will -- But hush! here are the girls and my father. -- I will carry off the females, and leave you a clear field with the governor: carry your point with him, and we will talk about your breeches afterwards." ”

“ Seaforth followed his friend's advice, and the next morning came down to breakfast dressed in the habiliments of the preceding day. The charm was broken, the demon defeated; the light greys with the red stripe down the seams were yet in rerum natura, and adorned the person of their lawful proprietor.
Tom felicitated himself and his partner of the watch on the result of their vigilance; but there is a rustic adage, which warns us against self-gratulation before we are quite "out of the wood." -- Seaforth was yet within its verge. ”

“ Such was the legend attached to Tapton Everard, and such the story which the lively Caroline Ingoldsby detailed to her equally mercurial cousin Charles Seaforth, lieutenant in the Hon. East India Company's second regiment of Bombay Fencibles, as arm-in-arm they promenaded a gallery decked with some dozen grim-looking ancestral portraits, and, among others, with that of the redoubted Sir Giles himself. ”

“ The perfect stillness preserved by his follower seemed to reassure him; he turned aside; and from the midst of a thickset laurustinus, drew forth a gardener's spade, shouldering which he proceeded with great rapidity into the midst of the shrubbery. Arrived at a certain point where the earth seemed to have been recently disturbed, he set himself heartily to the task of digging, till, having thrown up several shovelfuls of mould, he stopped, flung down his tool, and very composedly began to disencumber himself of his pantaloons. ”

“ I shall only add that Mr and Mrs Seaforth are living together quite as happily as two good-hearted, good-tempered bodies, very fond, of each other, can possibly do: and, that since the day of his marriage Charles has shown no disposition to jump out of bed, or ramble out of doors o' nights, -- though, from his entire devotion to every wish and whim of his young wife, Tom insinuates that the fair Caroline does still occasionally take advantage of it so far as to "slip on the breeches." ”

“ At the two first items Tom smiled auspiciously; at the last he burst out into an absolute "guffaw."
"Steal your breeches! -- Miss Bailey over again, by Jove," shouted Ingoldsby. "But a gentleman, you say, -- and Sir Giles too. -- I am not sure, Charles, whether I ought not to call you out for aspersing the honour of the family."
"Laugh as you will, Tom, -- be as incredulous as you please. One fact is incontestible, -- the breeches are gone! ”

“ I do not pretend to say, indeed, that one or more of these pretty subjects might not have been introduced; but the most important and leading topic of the conference was -- Lieutenant Seaforth's breeches.
"Caroline," said Charles, "I have had some very odd dreams since I have been at Tappington."
"Dreams, have you?" smiled the young lady, arching her taper neck like a swan in pluming. "Dreams, have you?"
"Ay, dreams, -- or dream, perhaps, I should say; for, though repeated, it was still the same. And what do you imagine was its subject?"
"It is impossible for me to divine," said the tongue ”

“ Charles. How can you talk such nonsense?"
"But, Caroline, -- the breeches are really gone."
. . . . . . . . . .
On the following morning, contrary to his usual custom, Seaforth was the first person in the breakfast parlour. As no one else was present, he did precisely what nine young men out of ten so situated would have done; he walked up to the mantel-piece, established himself upon the rug, and subducting his coat-tails one under each arm, turned towards the fire that portion of the human frame which it is considered equally indecorous to present to a friend or enemy. ”

“ Our ancestors ate rats ("The nasty fellows!" shuddered Miss Julia in a parenthesis) ; and owls, you now, are capital mousers -- "
"I've seen a howl," said Mr Peters; "there's one in the Sohological Gardens, -- a little hook-nosed chap in a wig, -- only its feathers and -- "
Poor P. was destined never to finish a speech.
"Do be quiet!" cried the authoritative voice, and the would-be naturalist shrank into his shell, like a snail in the "Sohological Gardens."
"You should read Blount's 'Jocular Tenures,' Mr Ingoldsby," pursued Simpkinson. "A learned man was Blount! ”

“ He had gone out a boy, he -- returned a man, but the impression made upon his youthful fancy by his favourite cousin remained unimpaired, and to Tapton he directed his steps, even before he sought the home of his widowed mother, -- comforting himself in this breach of filial decorum by the reflection that, as the manor was so little out of his way, it would be unkind to pass, as it were, the door of his relatives without just looking in for a few hours. ”

“ Mr Maguire meanwhile was fain to share the apartment of Oliver Dobbs, the squire's own man: a jocular proposal of joint occupancy having been first indignantly rejected by "Mademoiselle," though preferred with the "laste taste in life" of Mr Barney's most insinuating brogue.
. . . . . . . . . .
"Come, Charles, the urn is absolutely getting cold; your breakfast will be quite spoiled: what can have made you so idle?" ”

“ Mr Simpkinson from Bath did not attend the ceremony, being engaged at the Grand Junction Meeting of Scavans, then congregating from all parts of the known world in the city of Dublin. His essay, demonstrating that the globe is a great custard, whipped into coagulation by whirlwinds, and cooked by electricity, -- a little too much baked in the Isle of Portland, and a thought underdone about the Bog of Allen, -- was highly spoken of, and narrowly escaped obtaining a Bridgewater prize. ”

“ Rochefoucault says, there is something in the misfortunes of our very best friends that does not displease us; -- assuredly we can, most of us, laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them. ”

“ Smitten as he was, and in the immediate presence of her who had made so large a hole in his heart, his manner was evidently distrait, which the fair Caroline in her secret soul attributed to his being solely occupied by her agremens, -- how would she have bridled had she known that they only shared his meditations with a pair of breeches!
Charles drank his coffee and spiked some half-dozen eggs, darting occasionally a penetrating glance at the ladies, in hope of detecting the supposed waggery by the evidence of some furtive smile or conscious look. But in vain ”

“ Tom composed his features on the instant, and replied with more gravity, as well as with an expletive, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within hearing, might have cost him five shillings.
"There is something very queer in this, after all. The clothes, you say, have positively disappeared. Somebody is playing you a trick, and, ten to one, your servant has a hand in it. By the way, I heard something yesterday of his kicking up a bobbery in the kitchen, and seeing a ghost, or something of that kind, himself. ”

“ Some workmen employed in grubbing an old plantation, for the purpose of raising on it site a modern shrubbery, dug up, in the execution of their task, the mill-dewed remnants of what seemed to have been once a garment. ”

“ With their green morocco slippers on a modern fender in front of a disgracefully modern grate, sat two young gentlemen, clad in "shawl pattern" dressing gowns and black silk stocks, much at variance with the high cane-backed chairs which supported them. A bunch of abomination, called a cigar, reeked in the left-hand corner of the mouth of one, and in the right-hand corner of the mouth of the other ”

“ And what sort of a ghost, Barney?"
"Och, then, divil a lie I'll tell your honour. A tall ould gentleman he was, all in white, with a shovel on the shoulder of him, and a big torch in his fist, -- though what he wanted with that it's meself can't tell, for his eyes were like gig-lamps, let alone the moon and the comet, which wasn't there at all, -- and 'Barney,' says he to me, -- 'cause why he knew me, -- 'Barney,' says he, 'what is it you're doing with the colleen there, Barney?' -- Divil a word did I say. Miss Pauline screeched, and cried murther in French, and ran off with herself ”

“ Richard Harris Barham (1788–1845) , "The Spectre of Tappington" (1840)
"IT is very odd, though; what can have become of them?" said Charles Seaforth, as he peeped under the valance of an old-fashioned bedstead, in an old-fashioned apartment of a still more old-fashioned manor-house; "'tis confoundedly odd, and I can't make it out at all. Why, Barney, where are they? ”