One by one the great superstitions of the world are slowly but surely disappearing. It was not long ago when we, in this new country of enlightenment, believed in _witchcraft_, and were burning witches at the stake; but now it would take a long hunt to find a man, woman or child who believed in that horrible and disastrous superstition. The same is almost true of "_Ghosts_," for that word is now used more in jest than in earnest; but to believe in "_apparitions_" is not altogether of past centuries, for there are still many who cling to the delusion of supernatural appearances. The modern way of putting it is "_Spirits_." Authors, poets and dramatists of all ages, sacred and profane, have made endless allusions to supernatural appearances, not only because _ghosts_ are convenient and entertaining characters to introduce, not only because writers naturally tried to reflect the beliefs of the periods of which they wrote, but because they could make a deeper impression on the minds of a superstitious world. Shakespeare makes fine use of the Ghost in Hamlet and in Macbeth, just as Goethe does of Mephistopheles in Faust. Not only is fiction and the drama full of Ghosts, but there are hundreds of volumes in the libraries giving serious, and apparently "well-authenticated" cases of supernatural appearances. Mrs. Crowe's "Nightside of Nature" is probably the classic of this line of literature--at least, it appears to be quoted more than any other. The author of Robinson Crusoe wrote "An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions; being an account of what they are and what they are not, when they come and when they come not; as also how we may distinguish between apparitions of Good and Evil Spirits, and how we ought to behave to them; with a variety of surprising and diverting examples never published before." I have frequently been asked by believing friends, "How do you account for this?"--following with, perchance, an elaborate account of what the aunt's mother's sister's nephew once saw. My answer has always been, and still is, to those friends, to Mrs. Crowe, Daniel DeFoe and all others, "I cannot account for what somebody else saw, says he saw, or thinks he saw; but let me see it and I will guarantee to give you a reasonable explanation." John Ruskin says somewhere that the greatest thing in this world is to see something and to be able to tell simply and accurately just what you saw, _and nothing else_. There is the secret! I remember the first time I saw Hermann the Great, and how I went home and told everybody about the wonderful trick he had performed. Of course, nobody could tell me how it was done, for, from the way I described it, it was an impossibility. Sometime later I had occasion to meet Mr. Hermann in his dressing room, and I then learned how the trick was done. How simple! I had been duped and deceived. My eyes had not seen aright. How different was the story I had told, from the story Hermann told!