CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA. 27

“Christmas: Eve came. —a clear, still night, with a white
earth and shining sky. Some twenty or more peopie, young
and old, gathered in the great kitchen to see the Christmas
candle ‘go off’ During the early part of the evening ‘Si’
Sloan entertained the company with riddles. Then my grand-
mother brought in the Christmas candle, an odd-looking object,
and set it down on its three
legs. She lighted it, blew out
the other candles, and asked
Silas to tell a story.

“Silas was glad of the op-
portunity to entertain such an
audience. The story that he
selected for this novel occa-
sion was awful in the extreme,
such as was usually told in
-those times before the great
kitchen fires.

“Silas — ‘ Si,’ as he was
called—vwas relating an ac-
count of a so-called haunted
house, where, according to his
silly narrative, the ghost of an
Indian used to appear at the
foot of an old woman’s bed; and some superstitious people
declared that the old lady one night, on awaking and finding
the ghostly Indian present, put out her foot to push him away,
and pushed her foot directly through him. What a brave old
lady she must have been, and how uncomfortable it must have
been for the ghost! — But at this point of Silas’s foolish story,
the dog suddenly started up and began to howl.