t the Rhine and the Black
Forest," interrupted Miss Van Rensselaer, with feminine inconsistency.

"I remember the Rhine and the Black Forest and all the other haunts of
elves and fairies and hobgoblins; but for good, honest spooks there is
no place like home. And what differentiates our spook--_spiritus
Americanus_--from the ordinary ghost of literature is that it
responds to the American sense of humor. Take Irving's stories, for
example. The 'Headless Horseman'--that's a comic ghost story. And Rip
Van Winkle--consider what humor, and what good humor, there is in the
telling of his meeting with the goblin crew of Hendrik Hudson's men! A
still better example of this American way of dealing with legend and
mystery is the marvellous tale of the rival ghosts."

"The rival ghosts!" queried the Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer
together. "Who were they?"

"Didn't I ever tell you about them?" answered Uncle Larry, a gleam of
approaching joy flashing from his eye.

"Since he is bound to tell us sooner or later, we'd better be resigned
and hear it now," said Dear Jones.

"If you are not more eager, I won't tell it at all."

"Oh, do, Uncle Larry! you know I just dote on ghost stories," pleaded
Baby Van Rensselaer.

"Once upon a time," began Uncle Larry--"in fact, a very few years
ago--there lived in the thriving town of New York a young American
called Duncan--Eliphalet Duncan. Like his name, he was half Yankee
and half Scotch, and naturally he was a lawyer, and had come to New
York to make his way. His father was a Scotchman who had come over
and settled in Boston and married a Salem girl. When Eliphalet Duncan
was about twenty he lost both of his parents. His father left him
enough money to give him a start, and a strong feeling of pride in
his Scotch birth; you see there was a title in the family in
Scotland, and although Eliphalet's father was the younger son of a
younger son, yet he always remembered, and always bade his only son
to remember, that this ancestry was noble. His mother left him her
full share of Yankee grit and a little old house in Salem which had
belonged to her family for more than two hundred years. She was a
Hitchcock, and the Hitchcocks had been settled in Salem since the
year 1. It was a great-great-grandfather of Mr. Eliphalet Hitchcock
who was foremost in the time of the Salem witchcraft craze. And this
little old house which she left to my friend Eliphalet Duncan was
haunted."

"By the ghost