her country house in a park, "recognised the strong
likeness to her father, and carried out all things desired by the dead
to the full, as had been requested. . . . The wishes expressed to her
were perfectly rational, reasonable and of natural importance."

The clerk, Wright, attests the accuracy of Mrs. Claughton's
description of Mr. Howard, whom he knew, and the correspondence of her
dates with those in the parish register and on the graves, which he
found for her at her request. Mr. Myers, "from a very partial
knowledge" of what the Meresby ghosts' business was, thinks the
reasons for not revealing this matter "entirely sufficient". The
ghosts' messages to survivors "effected the intended results," says
Mrs. Claughton.

* * * * *

Of this story the only conceivable natural explanation is that Mrs.
Claughton, to serve her private ends, paid secret preliminary visits
to Meresby, "got up" there a number of minute facts, chose a haunted
house at the other end of England as a first scene in her little
drama, and made the rest of the troublesome journeys, not to mention
the uncomfortable visit to a dark church at midnight, and did all this
from a hysterical love of notoriety. This desirable boon she would
probably never have obtained, even as far as it is consistent with a
pseudonym, if I had not chanced to dine with Dr. Ferrier while the
adventure was only beginning. As there seemed to be a chance of
taking a ghost "on the half volley," I at once communicated the first
part of the tale to the Psychical Society (using pseudonyms, as here,
throughout), and two years later Mrs. Claughton consented to tell the
Society as much as she thinks it fair to reveal.

This, it will be confessed, is a round-about way of obtaining fame,
and an ordinary person in Mrs. Claughton's position would have gone to
the Psychical Society at once, as Mark Twain meant to do when he saw
the ghost which turned out to be a very ordinary person.

There I leave these ghosts, my mind being in a just balance of
agnosticism. If ghosts at all, they were ghosts with a purpose. The
species is now very rare.

The purpose of the ghost in the following instance was trivial, but
was successfully accomplished. In place of asking people to do what
it wanted, the ghost did the thing itself. Now the modern theory of
ghosts, namely, that they are delusions of the senses of the seers,
caused somehow by the mental action of dead or distant people, does