But it soon became clear that the public cared for the Illusion, and not for the Spectre.

They were concerned about the mechanism of the contrivance, not awed by the supernatural appearances it brought before them.

When once you begin to inquire by what process a ghost is produced, it is clear you are not moved by its character as a spectre merely.

Puppets lose their power to please when the spectators are bent upon detecting the wires by which they are made to move.
The old melodramatic stage ghost--the spectre of "The Castle Spectre" school of plays--the phantom in a white sheet with a dab of red paint upon its breast, that rose from behind a tomb when a blow was struck upon a gong and a teaspoonful of blue fire was lighted in the wings, probably found its last home in the travelling theatre long known as "Richardson's." Expelled from the regular theatre, it became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, appearing at country fairs, and bringing to bear upon remote agricultural populations those terrors that had long since lost all value in the eyes of the townsfolk.

It lived to become a thing of scorn.