Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1886 — THE SYRINGA BUSH. [ARTICLE]

THE SYRINGA BUSH.

BY PAUL PASTNOR.

Mr. Maginnis was not afraid of ghosts. He never had been—he never would be. If he had said so once he had said so five hundred times, perhaps more. It was one of the supremest satisfactions of his life to laugh at the women folks and the children when they talked about ghosts. “Pooh, pooh, my dears!” he would cry. “The idea of being afraid of what doesn’t exist—afraid of nothing! I declare, it makes me tired!” (Mr. Maginnis fully sympathized ■with the recently published views of Mr. 'Walt Whitman on the subject of American «lang.) It sometimes used to make Mr. Maginnis turn fairly purple in the face with laughing to hear how the visiting servant girls came in all of a shiver in the evening after seeing Mr. Maginnis’ own last week’s underclothes mistily waving upon the •clothes-line. It was always with a fiendish •delight that the worthy man beheld a white cow or an old spavined and decrepit milkwhite horse abroad in the golden eventide, for he knew that in a very short time somebody—presumably an old maid or a schoolma’am, or a fat cook with a dozen bundles "under her arm, would be frightened out of "their false teeth. Such was Fletcher Ma•ginnis—a disbeliever in things supernatural; a little, pudgy, bay-windowed, prosaic, short-breathed, every-day grocer, who never sanded his sugar because he fully believed that somebody else had attended to that liitle matter before him. Now it happened in the regular course of events that winter approached, with its usual heralcby of frosts and mittens and the arrival of the man with the five-inch stove-pipe elbow under his arm. Mr. Maginnis, as usual, resurrected his ulster, and cracked the same old chestnut, is he met the blue-nosed ice man delivering bis last blocks of crystal comfort at the back door. Mrs. Maginnis began to gather in her choice plants, lamenting meanwhile that she had neglected this important domestic duty until the complexion of her nose, tweaked by the remorseless fingers of Jack Frost, must «urely attract the attention of passers by. One delicate syringa bush (Maginnis called it syringe bush, but then Maginnis had no eye for beauty, no olfactory •organ capable of aesthetic titillation) she •debated long over, undecided whether to Temove it, roots and all, to the cellar, or venture to intrust it to the chilly embraces of winter. Finally she*decided to give it a nice, fashionable, corn-colored ulster of •straw, which Maginnis should purchase for her, and some competent son of Erin cut and fit to suit the requirements of the bush. But meanwhile a sharp night threatened; Maginnis had gone to the store, to be absent “rather later than usual,” he said, as it was “lodge night;” and unless some covering were provided for it the precious syringa would probably freeze. So Mrs. Maginnis went into the house and got an old skirt of hers and a sheet. It was quite dark, but Mrs. Maginnis laughed as she spread out the balloon-like garment and slipped it over the bush, thinking what if anybody should see her now! Then she wrapped the sheet, fold on fold, around the bush, and fastened it with that woman’s rade mecum, a pin. * * * * * * * It was considerably “small” in the morning when Maginnis got away from the “lodge.” 1 He felt queer. The piercing air •of the early morning cut to his very marrow? He shivered, actually trembled—something he had not uone for twenty-three -years, although he wan a married man.

Somehow, his head seemed to be barsting. He grabbed his hat-rim, and with the greatest difficulty dissevered the connection between his brow and the tightening band, and tilted the hat upon the back of his head. How strangely the stars looked! How the ground seemed to glide forward and backward beneath his feet. He started dizzily in the direction of home, every now and then stopping to allow the shifting earth time to subside; then, clasping the unbuttoned ulster feebly with both hands, he staggered on again. Fletcher Maginnis was drunk—a little. Not so drunk that he didn’t realize it himself, but just drunk enough to be somewhat dazed and apprehensive and oblique of vision. He had no difficulty in finding his wuy home, but the way seemed long and strangely full of terrors. He shook like a leaf as he passed the low iron fence of the cemetery, aud once, as the wind passed with a long, rustling sound through a pile of leaves, he started to run, but his flapping ulster catching him between the legs, twirled him squarely around and brought him face to face with a ghastly gravestone close against the fence. The cold sweat stood on Mr. Maginnis’ brow when he staggered into bis own yard. He stopped for a moment and rubbed his hands across his eyes. Good heavens! what was that nodding back and forth in the rising winds? Mr. Maginnis’ heart gave a great thump, and his hair wiggled about under bis hat till it nearly pushed it off. He advanced a step—then retreated two. It surely was a ghost! It swayed from side to side like a person in great mental agony. Maginnis was sure that ho heard a low* moan escape his lips, and saw it wring its clammy hands. Just then a fierce gust of wind swept around the house. The figure seemed to shake itself aud expand. Another gust—and horrors! with an awful rustling and a clap that shook every bone in Maginnis’ body, the ghost left its moorings and floated swiftly toward him. One piercing, agonizing cry, more like the bray of a lost mule than the utterance of a human being, burst from the disbeliever's lips, and Maginnis fell back more dead than alive, while the trailing garments of the ghost passed over him and swept away in the darkness. ******* Mrs. Maginnis and the fat cook dragged Maginnis into the house. He was so badly scared that he could not speak an audible word for ten minutes; then he opened his ashen lips and groaned; “Where is the ghost?’’ If he had asked to see his maternal great-grandfather Mrs. Maginnis could not have been more taken aback. The idea of Maginnis admitting the existence of a ghost! By gentle degrees the wife of his bosom drew from him the haiTowing tale. At the story of the ghost in the yard she pricked up her ears. As Maginnis in his recital located the specter, a smile began to creep from the comers of the good lady’s mouth. When the ghost left its base and sprang upon Maginnis, she grinned. When he described the flop, and the rustle, and the trailing garments, she laughed outright. Maginnis in his turn was amazed. Mrs. Maginnis laughing at a ghost—the idea! He charged her with woman’s inconsistency. Her reply was brief and to the point: “Maginnis, you are a fool!" Maginnis rose on his eltynv. “That ghost you saw was the syringa bush, done up in a ” “And the trailing garments?” “The sheet blown off by the wind.” Maginnis has bought his wife a two-hundred-dollar seal-skin sacque and the cook a red dress, and their lips are sealed.— Chicago Ledger.