The Wichita Daily Eagle

Lord Castlereagh's Ghost,

In one of the standard British biographical works may be found the story of Lord Castlereagh and the ghost. It seems that when quite a young man Castlereagh commanded a militia regiment in Ireland. One night he was stationed in a large, desolate country house. The bed upon which my lord reposed was at the end of a long, dilapidated room, while at the other extremity a great fire of wood and turf had been prepared within a huge, gaping, old fashioned fireplace. Waking in the middle of the night, Castlereagh lay watching from his pillow the gradual darkening of the embers on the hearth, when suddenly they blazed up and a naked child stepped from among them upon the floor. The figure advanced slowly toward the drowsy but thoroughly puzzled general, seeming to grow with surprising rapidity at every step, until, coming within two or three paces of his bed, it had assumed the proportions and appearance of a ghastly giant, pale as death, with bleeding wounds across the brow, eyes seeming to glow with rage and despair. Lord Castlereagh said that he leaped from the bed and confronted the figure in an attitude of defiance, whereupon it retreated before him, diminishing in size as it withdrew, in the same manner that it had previously shot up and expanded. He followed it, pace by pace, until the original childlike form disappeared among the embers. This story Lord Castlereagh told and declared to be true in every particular at a party in Paris in 1815 when Scott was among the hearers. - St. Louis Republic.