' He spoke after this
manner, and quick as thought the spectacle vanished--it was but a
dream? Not a ghost was seen; no lurid face cast its pale shadow over
the dark canvas; the pure spirit of Washington had departed in
hopeless despair. I was about to read a prayer, when the dark canvas
moved aside, and there, real as life, sat on a slave's grave the
immaculate Brigadier;--he, reader, was sipping whiskey toddy, as if it
were his wont. Old Bunkum was the slave whose grave he sat upon. It
was a strange penance over the mound of one so old; and yet who in the
political world that had not paid it? 'Why!--Bunkum, you are
barefoot;' a voice spoke.
"'Remember, old man, you must keep on the stiff,--it's as necessary to
success as it was to believe the old Constitution frigate could whip
anything afloat.' It was the General who spoke to the ghost of Bunkum,
who, having risen from the grave, stood before him, moody and
despairing. In ecstasy he grasped the hand of the cold figure cried
out that his soul's love was with him. But in his exuberance he let
the whiskey run over the green grave, into which the ghost soon
disappeared and left him alone to his contemplations.
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