The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown House

Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2014
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783734745676
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852) was a depiction of life for African Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom. It energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. She wrote more than 20 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential for both her writings and her public stands on social issues of the day.

The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown House

Now, Sam, tell us certain true, is there any such things as ghosts?’

‘Be there ghosts?’ said Sam, immediately translating into his vernacular grammar: ‘wal, now that are’s jest the question, ye see.’

‘Well, grandma thinks there are, and Aunt Lois thinks it’s all nonsense. Why, Aunt Lois don’t even believe the stories in Cotton Mather’s “Magnalia.”’

‘Wanter know?’ said Sam, with a tone of slow, languid meditation.

We were sitting on a bank of the Charles River, fishing. The soft melancholy red of evening was fading off in streaks on the glassy water, and the houses of Oldtown were beginning to loom through the gloom, solemn and ghostly. There are times and tones and moods of nature that make all the vulgar, daily real seem shadowy, vague, and supernatural, as if the outlines of this hard material present were fading into the invisible and unknown. So Oldtown, with its elmtrees, its great square white houses, its meeting-house and tavern and blacksmith’s shop and mill, which at high noon seem as real and as commonplace as possible, at this hour of the evening were dreamy and solemn. They rose up blurred, indistinct, dark; here and there winking candles ...

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• The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown House
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