New Britain herald., 1916-08-15
Vanishing FavOriteS.
(NeW York Tribune)


 What has become of the ghosts of 1 yesterday, the apparitions that made | us shudder-the stories that were un- l canny reading alone at midnight? |? There they stand on the shelf, unread, | their spell departed, The Mysteries of l Udolpho" leading them all unless it | be Frankenstein's monster; but be- we 1 have long known, is merely an ale gory of good and evil, and so is The l Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. l Hyde"
 We have standardized the ghost. l We have given him more Or less scientific winding sheet. He no 1 longer Weeps or signs or wrings his hands or rattles his chains He is no 1 longer an omen of death and misfor- | tune, the curse of the house. We have turned him into a psychological 1 problem-he no longer haunts us. We haunt him in our fiction, in the track of our psychical researches, our Pa tlence Worthless" He must be made to stand and deliver what he knows What author would dare to introduce into his story an Old-faShiOned ghost? |? For there are fashions in ghosts-the belief in them survives, the form only changes-and the latest fashion does not lend itself to thrills.
 Our good old friend the horse has gone the way of the ghost in our fic- ton. Who of us cares today to see masked horseman riding forth at fall of night in the opening pages of a story? Or even two masked horse men meeting in deadly combat on a lonely road? The automobile has driven the horse from the place of honor 1t once held in our romance. Sixty miles an hour outdoes it's most
 .'jlnnal performances of sustained speed with heaving Hanks"
 '.)>@ r.UiN& out of the ', eS, today, or the cast or the north or the south? ? He grasps the wheel, and away
 Even mans best friend is passing from our stories. The dog still sur wives there, to be sure: We still en- counter him occasionally in an Eng fish novel, not sentimentalized, but as he is, friendly, faithful, cheerful. in- telligent, interested in all we humans do and say; but these welcome ap- pearances are unfortunately only ex captions that prove a growing rule. Poets rarely sing the dogs praises nowadays, though surely he has
 
 with his services in the trenches, as scout for the Red Cross, as sentinel for the Wearied troopers
 To be sure in another sense he has come into his own, thanks largely to Thompson Seton. Maeterlinck has devoted loving, tender book to rim, and so has GalsWorthy, not the least of the many merits of whose novels a Q in They are perhaps at the moment the most eloquent exceptions that prove the growing rule of the neglect of the dog by our nOvelists.
 And we are apparently through with the early Christian martyr, his Roman temptress and cruel imperial master-with the gladiator, too, whose superhuman feats of strength and daring made him in one hour of the arena more powerful with the pOpulace than Caesar himself. These WOrthies have worn out their welcome with too many last appearances. Tn the retrospect we believe that we like one of the earliest of these stories best of all-Whyte- MelVillc's "The GladiatOrs." Is that book still read? We doubt it. Are novels of English country life in the good old days, full of horses and dogs and hunting, still remembered? It is unlikely.
 Last, but not least, the charm of the desert island has departed Oc- casiOnal nOvclists still experiment with the motif, but it is only In a half hearted way. They lack the vision, the inVentivcness, the coura ge of loneliness. This is a gregariOus gen eratiOn. So they must needs spoil it all by the introduction of a woman a problem, the obsessing problem of the day, whereas such an isle should be the one place where the tired read CT should find refuge from It's com pleXities. Conrad, to be sure, knows the lonely places in the vastnesses of lonely seas and does not fear them. But he is a man of genius, an eNcep- tlOn to all rules.