Goodness knows that of all London's teeming millions I am the possessor of the most easily curdled blood, but my flesh declined to creep an inch from the first page to the last of _Animal Ghosts_ (RIDER). I think it was Mr. ELLIOTT O'DONNELL's way of telling his stories that was responsible for my indifference. He is so incorrigibly reticent. His idea of a well-told ghost story runs on these lines:--"In the year 189--, in the picturesque village of C----, hard by the manufacturing town of L----, there lived a wealthy gentleman named T---- with his cousin F---- and two friends M---- and R----." I simply refuse to take any interest in the spectres of initials, still less in the spectres of the domestic pets of initials. I am no bigot; by all means deny your ghost his prerogative of clanking chains and rattling bones; but there are certain points on which I do take a firm stand, and this matter of initials is one of them. Not one of these stories is convincing. Mr. O'DONNELL taps you on the chest and whispers hoarsely, "As I stood there my blood congealed, I could scarcely breathe. My scalp bristled;" and you, if you are like me, hide a yawn and say, "No, really?" There is a breezy carelessness, too, about his methods which kills a story. He distinctly states, for instance, that the story of the "Headless Cat of No. ----, Lower Seedley Street, Manchester," was told to him by a Mr. ROBERT DANE. In the first half of the narrative this gentleman's brother-in-law addresses him as _Jack_, and later on his wife says to him, "Oh, _Edward_." What a man whose own Christian name is so much a matter of opinion has to say about seeing headless cats does not seem to me to be evidence. * * * * *