Welcome back, everyone to 1001 classic short stories and tales.

This is your host, John Haggardorn.

Today, a story from one of my favorite writers,

Frank Stockton. The story called The Transfer Ghost. Hope you enjoy it.

The country residence of Mr. John Hinkman was a delightful place to me, for many reasons.

It was the abode of a genial, though somewhat impulsive,

hospitality. It had broad, smooth-shaven lawns and towering oaks and elms. There were baski

shades at several points, and not far from the house there was a little rill spanned by a rustic bridge

with the bark on.

There were fruits and flowers, pleasant people, chess, billiards, rides, walks, and fishing.

These were great attractions, but none of them, nor all of them together, would have been

sufficient to hold me to the place very long.

I had been invited for the trout season, but should probably have finished my visit early in the summer had it not been that upon fair days when the grass was dry and the sun was not too hot,

and there was but little wind. There strolled beneath the lofty elms or passed lightly through the

basque shades, the form of my Madeline.

This lady was not my Madeline. She had never given herself to me, nor had I in any way,

acquired possession of her. But as I considered her possession the only sufficient reason for

the continuance of my existence, I called her, in my reveries, mine. It may have been that I would

not have been obliged to confine the use of this possessive pronoun to my reveries, and I confessed

the state of my feelings to the lady. But this was an unusually difficult thing to do.

Not only did I dread, as almost all lovers dread, taking the step which would in an instant

put an end to that delightful season which may be termed the anti-interrogatory period of love,

...