so, I try to explain why I thought
so. It sounds a silly argument even to myself; I feel I have not got it
quite right. Added to which it was not my partner who played the two of
clubs, it was Dummy. If I had only remembered this, and had concluded
from it--as I ought to have done--that my partner had the ace of
diamonds--as otherwise why did he pass my knave?--we might have saved the
odd trick. I have not the head for bridge. It is only an ordinary
head--mine. I have no business to play bridge.

Why not, occasionally, a cheerful Ghost.

But to return to our ghosts. These four gentlemen must now and again,
during their earthly existence, have sat down to a merry game of cards.
There must have been evenings when nobody was stabbed. Why choose an
unpleasant occasion to harp exclusively upon it? Why do ghosts never
give a cheerful show? The lady who was poisoned! there must have been
other evenings in her life. Why does she not show us "The first
meeting": when he gave her the violets and said they were like her eyes?
He wasn't always poisoning her. There must have been a period before he
ever thought of poisoning her. Cannot these ghosts do something
occasionally in what is termed "the lighter vein"? If they haunt a
forest glade, it is to perform a duel to the death, or an assassination.
Why cannot they, for a change, give us an old-time picnic, or "The
hawking party," which, in Elizabethan costume, should make a pretty
picture? Ghostland would appear to be obsessed by the spirit of the
Scandinavian drama: murders, suicides, ruined fortunes, and broken hearts
are the only material made use of. Why is not a dead humorist allowed
now and then to write the sketch? There must be plenty of dead comic
lovers; why are they never allowed to give a performance?

Where are the dead Humorists?

A cheerful person contemplates death with alarm. What is he to do in
this land of ghosts? there is no place for him. Imagine the commonplace
liver of a humdrum existence being received into ghostland. He enters
nervous, shy, feeling again the new boy at school. The old ghosts gather
round him.

"How do you come here--murdered?"

"No, at least, I don't think so."

"Suicide?

"No--can't remember the name of it now. Began with a chill on the liver,
I think."

The ghosts are disappointed. But a happy suggestion is made. Perhaps he
was the murderer; that would be even better. Let him think carefully;