anus_--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 marvelous 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 of one of the witches, of course?" interrupted Dear Jones.

"Now how could it be the ghost of a witch, since the witches were all
burned at the stake? You never heard of anybody who was burned having a
ghost, did you?" asked Uncle Larry.

"That's an argument in favor of cremation, at any rate," replied Dear