The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-10-27
!, Were-Wolves
and Edgar Allan Poe

ter do the same, seeing we get paid to re-
view books, and mot nerves
The stories in the book are told by Dc
foe, Scott, GsskeIl, Bulwer Lytton, Mar
ryat Poe, OBrien (Ftz-James), Haw-
thorne, Irving, Dickens and Kipling.
They are all cid friends, and rereading
Of them, if you are ghost sharp and
blass On the supernatural, leaves fiat,
tasteiess taste in the moath-with three
notable exceptions, which we will speak of
a little later.
You know all the machinery Of the
thrill, and in most of the stories you can
hear the pulleys and the tackle creaking.
Ghosts stories must be written by veritable
believers in the supernatural or mad ge-
muses. to be effective And one has but
to read Defoe, Seett, Lytton, Kipling,
Dickens ct al. to know that they no more
believed in ghosts than the average banker
believes m fairies. They tell stories;
they have experienced nothing.
They, like Joseph Conrad in another
sphere, oEerwork their preliminaries
Dickens used up a hundred pages to
work yon up to a sob, Conrad uses up two
hundred pages in luring' you to the eatas-'
trophe of a soul, and when he reaches
the climax you have lost all interest in
what's going to happen. So with the av-
erage ghost story teiler-too many wrapt
pings and very little corpse. They work
in the daylight because they are wide
awake, daylight beings They do not
convince because they hare NOT been there
John of Patmos, Dante, Blake, Sweden
borg awe because they are relating their
travels; Chesterton, Afgernon Blaekwood
and Kipling merely amlrse us-they never
were really there.
The two authentic ghost temperaments
in the book are Poe and Hawthorne-the
former with LgeiG and the Ms Found 30
a Bottle. the batter with The Grsy Chan
pan. Hawthorne had been in the Else
where. He was a back world soul, another
world spirit, and when he tells ghost
story he takes You back 10 his home The
atmosphere Of the supernatural wells
from the first line of his story because
your fingers are on has nerves You are,
in his story, not in trick cabinet, but in
the soul Of Nathaniel Hawthorne Daily
life was to him ghost story. Life was
a parable, mystery. The Gray Ckam-
piOs was no old nurses story, but chunk
out of life itself.
But Poe possessed the magic of magic.
A rereading Of Lgsid and his MS. Found
~ Bottle leaves US IN the same profound
and worshipful attitude toward the ge-
mus Of that strange being that we had
when, in that immemorial year, we first
came across Ulaiame, The Raren and The
FAD Of the House Of Csher.
Here, in Poe, we come to the Ineas Of
the imagination, the Golc0ndas of I'm
reality. His soul did not fit into his
body. His body was only On halfway,
like new shoe that has got stuck. His
consciousness had never warped into lis
muscles, blood and motor centres.
His nnearthly imagination. is like a
great ebon-golden cloud that hoyers on the
edge Of his planet body. He was the son
of Paraeelsus by Proserpina. His satan
ism was the satanism of the mysterious
Latin Wandering Jew.
In Eureka he climbed to the SUBMITS of
science, in A. Cdsk Of AmoatilLudo he
walked the pavement Of the final he'll, in
Helen and AnnabsI Lee he was radiant
butterfly of the violet ethers.
The breath Of the first morning always
blew through his naked and unfamiliar
soul. He breaks tombs and enters stars.
and strides the No Mans Land of forgot
ten moods quite at home and shell proof
Like De Quincy, Blake and Lafeadio
Hearn! His poetry and his prese were
written on the other side Of matter. He
was such stuff as ghosts are made of, and
bis little LIFE was rounded by erucifxion
Buy Famous Ghost Stories if only to
Al L.