THE BEAUTIFUL LADDER. 45 
wisp, or, as called more generally, the Jack-o- 
lantern. But words can give you but a faint 
idea of that grotesque landscape, and so they 
need not be multiplied; only let the shading be 
put in most freely and sombrely, and the picture 
will not be overdrawn. 
“ Trained under the influence of a neighbor¬ 
hood mostly settled by descendants from that 
section of Massachusetts which felt the blight 
of the Salem witchcraft, it was natural that the 
young and susceptible imagination should be 
misdirected, and behold in such surroundings a 
picture of Nature’s most horrid painting, where 
the background would be filled with 
‘ Gorgons and chimeras dire.’ 
*‘Oh, how often, when belated at a neigh¬ 
bor’s house, were the borders of that dread 
landscape trodden by flying feet as the truant 
sped homeward, not daring to look behind, lest 
some ghost or hobgoblin should be seen in full 
chase! 
“ Tam O’Shanter, when his gray mare, Meg, 
carried him, by that last desperate leap, safely 
past the keystone of the Brig of Ayr, was not 
more exultant in his sense of safety than was 
