New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-08-09
Vanishing Favorites.

What has become of the ghosts Of yes
teryear, the apparitions that made us
shudder-the stories that were uncanny
reading alone at midnight? There they
stand on the shelf, unread, their spell de-
parted, THE Mysteries of Udolpho" lead
ing them all, unless it be Frankenstein's
monster; but he, we have long known, is
merely an alegory of good ard evil, and
so is THE Strange Case of DR.. Jekyll and
Mr.. Hyde"
We have standardized the ghost. We
have given him a more or less scientific
winding sheet. He no longer weeps or
signs or wrings his hands or rattles his
chains. He is no longer an omen Of death
and misfortune, the curse of the house.
We have turned him into psychological
problem-he no longer haunts US. We
haunt him in our fiction, in the track of
our physical researches, our Patience
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 fash
ions 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 fiction. Who
of US cares to-day to see a masked horse
man riding forth at fall of night in the
opening pages of story? Or even two
masked horsemen meeting in deadly COM
bat on a lonely road? The automobile has
driven the horse from the place Of honor
it once held in our romance. Sixty miles
an hour outdoes its most remarkable fc-
tional performances of sustained speed
with heaving TANKS What hero comes
riding out of the West to-day, or the East
or the North or the South? He grasps the
wheel, and away!
Even mans best friend is passing from
our stories. The dog still survives there,
to be sure. We still encounter him oc-
casionally in an English novel, not senti-
imentalized, but as he is, friendly, faithful,
cheerful, intelligent, interested IN all we
humans do and say; but these welcome ap-
pearances are unfortunately only eXcep-
tions that prove a growing rule Poets
rarely sing the dogs praises nowadays,
though surely he has earned his right
to new laureate 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. Maeterlnck has devoted a loving,
tender book to him, and so has Galsworthy,
not the least of the many merits of whose
novels are the dogs that live in their pages.
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 tempt
ress 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
worthless have worn out their welcome with
too many last appearances. In the retro
spect we believe that we like one of the
earliest of these stories best of all-Whyte-
Mcville'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.
pLast, but not least, the charm of the