cle is coming in sight. The thrill with which
you read of the ghost in Ellis Parker Butler's _The Late John Wiggins_,
who deposits his wooden leg with the family he is haunting, on the plea
that it is too materialistic to be worn with ease, and therefore they
must take care of it for him, doesn't altogether leave you even when you
discover that the late John is a fraud, has never been a ghost nor used
a wooden leg. But a terrifying leg-acy while you do believe in it!

The new ghost has a more nimble and versatile tongue as well as wit. In
the older fiction and drama apparitions spoke seldom, and then merely as
_ghosts_, not as individuals. And ghosts, like kings in drama, were of a
dignity and must preserve it in their speech. Or perhaps the authors
were doubtful as to the dialogue of shades, and compromised on a few
stately ejaculations as being safely phantasmal speaking parts. But
compare that usage with the rude freedom of some modern spooks, as John
Kendrick Bangs's spectral cook of Bangletop, who lets fall her h's and
twists grammar in a rare and diverting manner. For myself, I'd hate to
be an old-fashioned ghost with no chance to keep up with the styles in
slang. Think of having always--and always--to speak a dead language!

The humorous ghost is not only modern, but he is distinctively American.
There are ghosts of all nationalities, naturally, but the spook that
provides a joke--on his host or on himself--is Yankee in origin and
development. The dry humor, the comic sense of the incongruous, the
willingness to laugh at himself as at others, carry over into
immaterialization as characteristic American qualities and are preserved
in their true flavor. I don't assert, of course, that Americans have
been the only ones in this field. The French and English selections in
this volume are sufficient to prove the contrary. Gautier's _The Mummy's
Foot_ has a humor of a lightness and grace as delicate as the princess's
little foot itself. There are various English stories of whimsical
haunting, some of actual spooks and some of the hoax type. Hoax ghosts
are fairly numerous in British as in American literature, one of the
early specimens of the kind being _The Specter of Tappington_ in the
_Ingoldsby Legends_. The files of _Blackwood's Magazine_ reveal several
examples, though not of high literary value.

Of the early specimens of the really amusing ghost that is an actual
revenant is _The Ghost Baby_, in _Blackwood's_,