In my day I was a doctor fearless of any other contagion; typhus, scarletina, diphtheria, yellow fever, none of them had terrors for me.

And yet I was afraid to attend a case of smallpox.

From the same cause, in my public speeches I made light of it, talking of it with contempt as a sickness of small account, much as a housemaid talks in the servants' hall of the ghost which is supposed to haunt the back stairs.
And now, coming as it were from that merry and populous chamber of life and health, once again I met the Spectre I derided, a red-headed, red-visaged Thing that chose me out to stop and grin at.

Somehow I was not minded to return and announce the fact.
"Why," they would say, "_you_ were the one who did not believe in ghosts.

It was _you_ who preached of vile superstitions, and yet merely at the sight of a shadow you rush in with trembling hands and bristling hair to bid us lay it with bell, book, and candle.