Company and Solitude 109 



ners, a little roguish at times, and a bit in- 

 quisitive, yet never that terror of the flesh, 

 obtrusive. Intuition never deserts the ghost. 

 It reads your thoughts before it enters your 

 presence, and knows to the second when to 

 come and go. These jolly creatures are my 

 best friends, and how can any one be alone 

 when such company is ever at hand, asking 

 no other condition than that your fleshly 

 brethren shall keep in the background? I 

 have accepted their terms, and so, while I 

 love myself above all others in the worldly 

 sense, and to all appearances am concerned 

 with my own thoughts only, and my own 

 whims and their gratification, yet my troop 

 of friends unseen by others' eyes are 

 always actually at hand or within the reach 

 of an unworded wish. 



Is this not a fitting condition ? What 

 can be more ghost-like than an unspoken 

 thought? It is not the less a faft because 

 unseen and unheard. It may not travel to 

 my neighbor and prod his brain to an addi- 

 tional activity, but how quickly it flies to 

 the surrounding outlook and beckons to me 

 a dozen or a hundred ghosts and bids them 

 attend upon me ! This makes a monarch of 



