CHAPTER XVIII.
STAGE GHOSTS.
The ghost, as a vehicle of terror, a solvent of dramatic difficulties, and a source of pleasurable excitement to theatrical audiences, seems to have become quite an extinct creature.

As Bob Acres said of "damns," ghosts "have had their day;" or perhaps it would be more correct to say, their night.

It may be some consolation to them, however, in their present fallen state, to reflect that they were at one time in the enjoyment of an almost boundless prosperity and popularity.

For long years they were accounted among the most precious possessions of the stage.

Addison writes in "The Spectator": "Among the several artifices which are put in practice by the poets, to fill the minds of the audience with terror, the first place is due to thunder and lightning, which are often made use of at the descending of a god, at the vanishing of a devil, or at the death of a tyrant.