Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1885 — Fashions in Gihosts. [ARTICLE]

Fashions in Ghosts.

Of course, ghosts, like all else have had to submit to a process of evolution in order to be adapted to their present environment The ghost of the theteenth is very unlike the ghost of the sixteenth century. For one thing, ghosts are no longer limited in their hour of “walking.” They have considerably more liberty, as is only natural in these days. They are no more bound at cock crow to “shrink in haste away, and van-

ish from our sight.” They no longer “in habit as they lived,” “with solemn march go slowly and stately by;" and they no longer restrict their appearance to great occasions, when weighty words of warning or advice are needful. The modem ghost has been developed into a much less substantial and a much less reasonable being than its ancestors. It is sometimes reduced to a mere voice, or even to a message conveyed without a voice, or to a shadowy hand or dim vision floating vaguely in the air at a dark seance. And too often for their ghostly reputation’s sake the communications made by these pseudoghosts are inanely foolish, pointless, and useless. The robust, matter-of-fact old-fashioned ghosts who haunted country houses and country lanes, and scared the children and maid servants, and terrified all the villagers with guilty consciences are hopelessly out of date. The lovely lady who wandered up and down lonely corridors perpetually wringing her hands—the bleeding body carrying its own ghastly head—all the murdered victims “shaking their gory locks,” or stalking solemnly as the ghost of “buried Denmark”—most majestical of ghosts until his message was delivered —are fast vanishing, even from the Christmas stories. Instead of these old friends we have now a bewildering and provoking tribe of apparitions, only half real ghost and half idea. We have spiritualistic manifestations, new and occult powers and mysteries enough, but all supposed to be scientifically explicable. Now a natural and commonplace explanation is the ruin of a good ghost story. When we have turned down the lights and prepared for-a delightful thrill of horror, one does not want one’s ghost to be explained away; one feels cheated when the “true ghost story” is only an account of a flashy apparition, which comes in a stupid kind of way to announce its own death; and one feels positively inured when it is explained by a scientific description of brain waves and transmitted consciousness. Ghosts, we sadly fear, have had their day—or night. Now that they are so carefully discussed they will certainly die out. For discussion destroys credulity, and when no one believes any more in ghosts no one will ever again see a ghost. —London Globe. Experimens have lately been made by the French Government with a new kind of siege gun of prodigious power. It is described as made of steel, and nearly thirty feet long, and the tube is '• ' r~~ : g,

strengthened with ten coils of plated steel wire one millimeter, or .039 inch, an diameter. The composition is such that the cannon, after a few dischargee, becomes elongated by three millimeters. The weight of this gun is fifty tons, and it projects a shell weighing 297 pounds, capable of penetrating armor plates nearly six inohes thick at a range of seven and one-half miles.