364 ARE THERE ANY GHOSTS ?

I had was visibly increasing; for having no great family, I could
not spend the income of what I had, unless I would set up for an
expensive way of living, such as a great family, servants, equipage,
gaiety, and the like, which were things I had no notion of, or incli-
nation to; so that I had nothing indeed to do but to sit still, and
fully enjoy what I had got, and see it increase daily upon my hands.

Yet all these things had no effect upon me, or at least not
enough to resist the strong inclination I had to go abroad again,
which hung about me like a chronical distemper; particularly, the
desire of seeing my new plantation in the island, and the colony I
left there, ran in my head continually. I dreamed of it all night,
and my imagination ran upon it all day; it was uppermost in all
my thoughts, and my fancy worked so steadily and strongly upon
it, that I talked of it in my sleep. In short, nothing could remove
it out of my mind; it even broke so violently into all my dis-
courses, that it made my conversation tiresome: for I could talk of
nothing else; all my discourse ran into it, even to impertinence,
and I saw it myself.

Thave often heard persons of good judgment say that all the
stir people make in the world about ghosts and apparitions is
owing to the strength of imagination and the powerful operation
of fancy in their minds; that there is no such thing as a spirit ap-
pearing, or a ghost walking, and the like: that people’s poring
affectionately upon the past conversation of their deceased friends
so realizes it to them, that they are capable of fancying, upon some
extraordinary circumstances, that they see them, talk to them, and
are answered by them; when, in truth, there is nothing but
shadow and vapour in the thing, and they really know nothing of
the matter.

For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any
such things as real apparitions, spectres, or walking of people after
they are dead; or whether there is anything in the stories they
tell us of that kind more than the product of vapours, sick minds,
and wandering fancies; but this I know, that my imagination
worked up to such a height, and brought me into such ecstasies
of vapours, or what else I may call it, that I actually supposed
myself oftentimes upon the spot, at my old castle behind the trees;