various contributors

“ They tempt me to filch away chairs from beneath stout and elderly gentlemen who are about to sit down. Take the case of Sergeant-Major Farrer in Night Watches (Hodder and Stoughton) . He was afraid of nothing on earth, or off it, but ghosts, and he despised the weedy young man who was in love with his daughter. So the weedy young man dared him to come to a haunted cottage at midnight, and, dressed up as a spectre, terrified the soldier into something more than a strategic retreat, with the result that he surrendered his daughter. ”

“ The grim tale serves to show to what lengths the force of suggestion will, in times of excitement, carry folk otherwise sober and truthful. Manifestly preposterous evidence, freely given, was freely admitted by trained legal minds—evidence on which innocent lives were sacrificed at the average rate of over a thousand a month in England and Scotland in the two centuries of the chief witch-baiting period. ”

“ Aderhold, the kindly free-thinking mystic, and Joan Heron, the simple village maid, found their ultimate and, for the times, merciful release by halter in place of fire, readers who have nerves to spare for horror will read with eagerness. ”

“ In real life of course it is different. I know a colour-sergeant, and somehow I rather think that if I—but never mind. In Mr. Jacobs' beautiful world, as it is with Mr. Farrer so is it with Peter Russet, with Ginger Dick and with Sam Small. They know when the laugh is against them, and, waiving the appeal to force or to law, they grumble but retire. There is one exercise in the gruesome in Night Watches, but it hardly shows Mr. ”