(Author of " Three Men in a Boat,"
Paul Kelver," ete.) vil.
Ghosts are in the air. It is difficult at this moment to avoid talking of ghosts.
first question you are asked. on being introduced this season is: " Do you ye in ghosts?" I would be so glad to believe in ghosts. This world is much too small for me. Up to a-century or intellectual young man found ut for his purposes. It still contained the unknown—the possible—within its boundaries, New continents ill to be discovered: we dreamt of desert-fenced Utopias. and Wonderland lay ever just beyond our horizon. To-day the world is small, the light railway runs through the desert, the coasting steamer calls at the Islands of the Blessod, the last baffled curiosity turns for relief outwards. We call upon the dead to rescue us from riy. The first authentic ghost will be welcomed as the saviour of humanity.
But he must be a living ghost—a ghost we can respect, a ghost we can listen to. The poor spiritless addle-headed ghost that "has hitherto haunted our blue chambers is of no use tous. I remember'a thoughtful man once remarking during argument that if he believed in ghosts—the silly, childish spooks about which we had been telling anecdotes—death would possess for him an added fear: the idea that his next "dwelling-place would be Jamong such a pack of dismal idiots would sadden his departing hours. What was he to talk to them about? Apparently their only interest lay in recalling their earthly troubles. The ghost of the lady unhappily married who had been poisoned, or had her throat cut, who every night for the last five hundred years had visited the chamber where it happened for no other purpose than to scream about it, what a tiresome person she would be to meet All her conversation during the long days Would be sound her earthly wrongs. The other ghosts, in all probability would have heard about that husband of hers, what he said, and what he did, till they were sick of the subject. A newcomer would be seized upon with avidity.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.