ts, Liliputians, desert-fenced Utopias. We
set our sail, 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 Blessed, the last mystery
has been unveiled, the fairies are dead, the talking birds are silent.
Our baffled curiosity turns for relief outwards. We call upon the dead
to rescue us from our monotony. 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 to us. 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 among 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 around 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.

A lady of repute writes to a magazine that she once occupied for a season
a wainscotted room in an old manor house. On several occasions she awoke
in the night: each time to witness the same ghostly performance. Four
gentlemen sat round a table playing cards. Suddenly one of them sprang
to his feet and plunged a dagger into the back of his partner. The lady
does not say so: one presumes it was his partner. I have, myself, when
playing bridge, seen an expression on my partner's face that said quite
plainly:

"I would like to murder you."

I have not the memory for bridge. I forget who it was that, last trick
but seven, played the two of clubs. I thought it was he, my partner. I
thought it meant that I was to take an early opportunity of forcing
trumps. I don't know why I thought