A STUDENTS MASQUERADE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5490, 21 June 1879, Page 7

A STUDENTS MASQUERADE.

A practical joke recently played by a studeut in the Ohio Normal College bad a decidedly unpleasant endiog for the joker, and which will doubtless teach him a wholesome lesson for the reat of his life. A number of the students had one evening been di.-•-nssing spiritualism, ghostly appearances, ami ither supernatural wonders, and one of them, n j'oiing man named Stout, had announced his belief in the power of the dead, under some circumstances, to revisit this world, iu visible form. He was almost alone in this belief, and his declaration of it excited much ridicule amongst his brother students, and gave the idea to one of them, named Love, of having a joke at Stout's expense. Accordingly, after all the reßt had gone to bed, Mr. Love wrapped himself in a sheet, and repaired to Stont's bedroom. Cautiously entering, he found Stout sound asleep. In order to awaken him with the traditional " ioy touch" of a ghost, he pressed his palm against a window pane until it was thoroughly chilled, and then laid it on the forehead of the sleeper, at the same time saying, in as sepulchral a voice as he could assume/J " Awake ! Awake!" Stout did awake, and his first movement shewed that he was very wide awake indeed. He may have been frightened, or he may have seen through the imposture at once, but he certainly was not paralized by fear, for he jumped out of bed, seized a chair, and brought it down with a resounding whack on the head of his gbostship. With a yell that was not at all ghostly, Love dropped to the floor, and when lights *nd assistance arrived, he was found to have a cracked skull and a broken nose. He is now recovering from his injuries, but he does not look at all pretty with his bandaged head and his nose in splints, and it is believed that he will not again disturb his comrades with any more mnsquerades in ghostly costume.