The Haunted Looking Glass: A Visitor from Down Under (35-74)

"A Visitor from Down Under" by L. P. Hartley is yet another ghost story in Edward Gorey's The Haunted Looking Glass. The story is set in London on a wet and foggy night. In the following passage, the conductor of a bus is attempting to hand a man his ticket.

The conductor felt reluctant, he did not know why, to oblige the passenger in this. The rigidity of the hand disconcerted him: it was stiff, he supposed, or perhaps paralyzed. And since he had been standing on top his own hands were none too warm. The ticket doubled up and grew limp under his repeated efforts to push it in. He bent lower, for he was a goodhearted fellow, and using both hands, one above and one below, he slid the ticket into its bony slot.

"Right you are, Kaiser Bill." (57)

The quotation describes the gaunt and scrawny hand of the passenger. The "stiffness" is reminiscent of rigor mortis, or the rigidity of the joints and muscles after death, obviously hinting at the man's identity. And of course, the joke at the end is a reference to Kaiser Wilhelm (William) II of Germany during WWI who was know to have an infirmity of the arm.

Hartley, L. P. "A Visitor from Down Under." The Haunted Looking Glass. Ed. Edward Gorey. New York: The New York Review of Books, 1959. 57. Print.