introduced this season is:

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

I would be so glad to believe in ghosts. This world is much too
small for me. Up to a century or two ago the intellectual young man
found it sufficient for his purposes. It still contained the
unknown--the possible--within its boundaries. New continents were
still to be discovered: we dreamt of giants, Liliputians, desert-
fenced Utopias. We set our sail, and Wonderland lay ever just beyond
our horizon. To-day the world is small, the light railway runs
through the desert, the coasting steamer calls at the Islands of the
Blessed, the last mystery has been unveiled, the fairies are dead,
the talking birds are silent. Our baffled curiosity turns for relief
outwards. We call upon the dead to rescue us from our monotony. The
first authentic ghost will be welcomed as the saviour of humanity.

But he must be a living ghost--a ghost we can respect, a ghost we can
listen to. The poor spiritless addle-headed ghost that has hitherto
haunted our blue chambers is of no use to us. I remember a
thoughtful man once remarking during argument that if he believed in
ghosts--the silly, childish spooks about which we had been telling
anecdotes--death would possess for him an added fear: the idea that
his next dwelling-place would be among such a pack of dismal idiots
would sadden his departing hours. What was he to talk to them about?
Apparently their only interest lay in recalling their earthly
troubles. The ghost of the lady unhappily married who had been
poisoned, or had her throat cut, who every night for the last five
hundred years had visited the chamber where it happened for no other
purpose than to scream about it! what a tiresome person she would be