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"It was Jasmine's brilliant idea to include the attic in the usual tour, that is, to take the tourists right up and into it, instructing them to notice the delicious smell of the ooden rafters as they stood there, and to point out the fine steamer trunks and wardrobe trunks from earlier times, some open and heaped with furs and pearls rather like props for A Streetcar Narandfather William had spent his last days on the lawn The attic was -- before my own inevitable raid upon it -- a wilderness of rare and antique wicker, and tales devolved around it all

"Letpicture

"The bed-and-board guests were always company and a bit of an inspiration to me, because they were often friendly and attractive -- I tend to seeand points out to me that they're not -- and these people frequently invited me into their roo table and chat about the Manor House, as we so pretentiously called it, and I war because whenever I spoke to or of hiht Goblin thein the world

" 'So you have a little spirit friend!' one said triuold buried outside 'Tell us about your little ghost,' said another, and when I petted or stroked Goblin while talking of him, he was very happy, indeed He would flash on solid for a long tio transparent and then dissolve when he had to

"I couldn't have done better had I been a paid performer whose sole occupation was to increase the uests kicked in their support of the s of the Old Man, Manfred, scowling in afrom room to room in search of her orphaned children

"I learned from all this, from the endless variety hich the tales of our house oven, and I learned from adults how to think and feel like an adult, and Goblin fed off the easy way in which he fitted into everything And I ca a maverick like the Old Man

"Manfred, the Old Man, had coinia Lee He had started out as a saloon keeper in the Irish Channel but gone on toin New Orleans, but could find no locale suitable to his visions of splendor and so was drawn north across Lake Pontchartrain to this open land

"Here he found a parcel of real estate that is coround on which he could build a fabulous mansion, with servants' quarters, stables, terraces and pastures, plus two hundred acres of thick swa abandoned cemetery with its shell of a stone church, a tribute to those whose fao died out or decamped

"Manfred sent his architects to the fine homes of Natchez to choose the very best of attributes for this mansion, and he supervised its Greek Revival style, circular stairs and hallway murals himself

"All was for the love of Virginia Lee, who had a particular affection for the cemetery and sometimes went to the empty little stone church to pray

"The four oak trees that guard the cerown at that tiraveyard to the sith its greedy hideous cypress trees and endless tangles of Spanish moss no doubt added to, and adds to, the overall sense of melancholy

"But she was no sappy Victorian girl, Virginia Lee She had been an educated and devoted nurse to Manfred in a New Orleans hospital where he suffered a severe bout of Yellow Fever and, like reat reluctance that she gave up her vocation to nurse the sick, but Manfred, being much older and very persuasive, successfully enchanted her

"It was for Virginia Lee that Manfred had the portrait of hi in the parlor, and alas, as far as I know He was in his forties when the portrait was painted, but he had already co in some respects, with heavy jowls, an up-thrust obdurate ray hair by that time, circa 1885, and he still had a full head of it when Aunt Queen had her strange ave her the cameos before he disappeared into the swamp

"He doesn't look like a mean man in the

portrait In fact, I've always found the picture strongly co in vanity, that he allowed such an honest portrait of hi in his house