nd beauty in the thought
of the child hands coming back to serve others in homely tasks! Surely
no housewife in these helpless days would object to being haunted in
such delicate fashion.

Ghosts of to-day have an originality that antique specters lacked. For
instance, what story of the past has the awful thrill in Andreyev's
_Lazarus_, that story of the man who came back from the grave, living,
yet dead, with the horror of the unknown so manifest in his face that
those who looked into his deep eyes met their doom? Present-day writers
skillfully combine various elements of awe with the supernatural, as
madness with the ghostly, adding to the chill of fear which each concept
gives. Wilbur Daniel Steele's _The Woman at Seven Brothers_ is an
instance of that method.

Poe's _Ligeia_, one of the best stories in any language, reveals the
unrelenting will of the dead to effect its desire,--the dead wife
triumphantly coming back to life through the second wife's body. Olivia
Howard Dunbar's _The Shell of Sense_ is another instance of jealousy
reaching beyond the grave. _The Messenger_, one of Robert W. Chambers's
early stories and an admirable example of the supernatural, has various
thrills, with its river of blood, its death's head moth, and the ancient
but very active skull of the Black Priest who was shot as a traitor to
his country, but lived on as an energetic and curseful ghost.

_The Shadows on the Wall_, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman,--which one
prominent librarian considers the best ghost story ever written,--is
original in the method of its horrific manifestation. Isn't it more
devastating to one's sanity to see the shadow of a revenge ghost cast on
the wall,--to know that a vindictive spirit is beside one but
invisible--than to see the specter himself? Under such circumstances,
the sight of a skeleton or a sheeted phantom would be downright
comforting.

_The Mass of Shadows_, by Anatole France, is an example of the modern
tendency to show phantoms in groups, as contrasted with the solitary
habits of ancient specters. Here the spirits of those who had sinned for
love could meet and celebrate mass together in one evening of the year.

The delicate beauty of many of the modern ghostly stories is apparent in
_The Haunted Orchard_, by Richard Le Gallienne, for this prose poem has
an appeal of tenderness rather than of terror. And everybody who has
had affection for a dog will appreciate the pathos of the little sketch,