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303
The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
·
Andrew Lang
186
THE
GROCER'S
COUGH
A
man
of
letters
was
born
in
a
small
Scotch
town,
where
his
father
was
the
intimate
friend
of
a
tradesman
whom
we
shall
call
the
grocer.
Almost
every
day
the
grocer
would
come
to
have
a
chat
with
Mr.
Mackay,
and
the
visitor,
alone
of
the
natives,
had
the
habit
of
knocking
at
the
door
before
entering.
One
day
Mr.
Mackay
said
to
his
daughter,
"There's
Mr.
Macwilliam's
knock.
Open
the
door."
But
there
was
no
Mr.
Macwilliam!
He
was
just
leaving
his
house
at
the
other
end
of
the
street.
From
that
day
Mr.
Mackay
always
heard
the
grocer's
knock
"a
little
previous,"
accompanied
by
the
grocer's
cough,
which
was
peculiar.
Then
all
the
family
heard
it,
including
the
son
who
later
became
learned.
He,
when
he
had
left
his
village
for
Glasgow,
reasoned
himself
out
of
the
opinion
that
the
grocer's
knock
did
herald
and
precede
the
grocer.
But
when
he
went
home
for
a
visit
he
found
that
he
heard
it
just
as
of
old.
Possibly
some
local
Sentimental
Tommy
watched
for
the
grocer,
played
the
trick
and
ran
away.
This
explanation
presents
no
difficulty,
but
the
boy
was
never
detected.
{191}
Such
anecdotes
somehow
do
not
commend
themselves
to
the
belief
even
of
people
who
can
believe
a
good
deal.
But
"the
spirits
of
the
living,"
as
the
Highlanders
say,
have
surely
as
good
a
chance
to
knock,
or
appear
at
a
distance,
as
the
spirits
of
the
dead.
To
be
sure,
the
living
do
not
know
(unless
they
are
making
a
scientific
experiment)
what
trouble
they
are
giving
on
these
occasions,
but
one
can
only
infer,
like
St.
Augustine,
that
probably
the
dead
don't
know
it
either.
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