Charles Brocken Brown is My New Best Friend

I did the calculations just now, and realized that officially I now spend more time with old CBB than I do with an single person born after 1771. Somehow I'm not bothered by this. In fact, so little am I bothered by it that I think I'll even donate this precious post number 20 to him and his cause.

Take it away Charlie:

A Receipt for a Modern Romance
Charles Brockden Brown

TAKE an old castle; pull down a
part of it, and allow the grass to grow
on the battlements, and provide the
owls and bats with uninterrupted ha-
bitations among the ruins. Pour a
sufficient quantity of heavy rain upon
the hinges and bolts of the gates, so
that when they are attempted to be
opened, they may creak most fear-
fully. Next take an old man and
woman, and employ them to sleep in
a part of this castle, and provide them
with frightful stories of lights that
appear in the western or the eastern
tower every night, and of music heard
in the neighbouring woods, and ghosts
dressed in white who perambulate the
place.

Convey to this castle a young lady;
consign her to the care of the old
man and woman, who must relate to
her all they know, that is all they do
not know, but only suspect. Make
her dreadfully terrified at the relation,
but dreadfully impatient to behold
the reality. Convey her, perhaps
on the second night of her arrival,
through a trap-door, and from the
trap-door to a flight of steps down-
wards, and from a flight of steps to
a subterraneous passage, and from a
subterraneous passage, to a door that
is shut, and from that to a door that
is open, and from that to a cell, and
from that to a chapel, and from a
chapel back to a subterraneous passage
again; here present either a skeleton
with a live face, or a living body
with the head of a skeleton, or a
ghost all in white, or a groan from a
distant part of a cavern, or the shake
of a cold hand, or a suit of armour
moving—fierce “put out the light,
and then”—

Let this be repeated for some nights
in succession, and after the lady has
been dissolved to a jelly with her
fears, let her be delivered by the man
of her heart, and married—Proba-
tum est.

As in medicine there is what phy-
sicians call an elegant prescription to
distinguish it from those incongruous
and absurd mixtures of the ancient
empirics, so, lest any one should think
I have put too many ingredients into
the above recipe, let him take the
following:
A novel now, says Will, is nothing more
Than an old castle, and a creaking door:
A distant hovel,
Clanking of chains, a gallery, a light,
Old armour, and a phantom all in white—
And there's a novel.
ANTI-GHOST.