Ghost of Japan detail, Books and bookmen (1899) (14783808522) (cropped)

Identifier: booksbookmen00lang (find matches)
Title: Books and bookmen ..
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912
Subjects: Bibliomania Literary forgeries and mystifications
Publisher: London, Longmans, Green
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Connecticut Libraries



Text Appearing Before Image:
We give too little thought andsympathy to ghosts, who in our old castles andcountry houses often find no one to appear tofrom years end to years end. Only now andthen is a guest placed in the haunted room.Then I like to fancy the glee of the lady ingreen, or the radiant boy, or the headless man,or the old gentleman in snuff-coloured clothes,as he, or she, recognises the presence of aspectator, and prepares to give his or her besteffects in the familiar style. Now in China and Japan certainly a ghostdoes not wait till people enter the hauntedroom : a ghost, like a person of fashion, goes
Text Appearing After Image:
A STORM-FIEND, 52 BOOKS AND BOOKMEN, everywhere. Moreover, he has this artisticexcellence, that very often you dont know himfrom an embodied person. He counterfeitsmortality so cleverly that he (the ghost) hasbeen known to personate a candidate forhonours, and pass an examination for him. Apleasing example of this kind, illustrating thelimitations of ghosts, is told in Mr. Giless book.A gentleman of Huai Shang, named Chou-t*ien-i,had arrived at the age of fifty, but his familyconsisted of but one son, a fine boy, strangelyaverse from study, as if there were anythingstrange in tJiat. One day the son disappearedmysteriously, as people do from West Ham. Ina year he came back, said he had been detainedin a Taoist monastery, and, to all mens amaze-ment, took to his books. Next year he obtainedhis B.A. degree, a First Class. All the neigh-bourhood was overjoyed, for Huai Shang waslike Pembroke College (Oxford), where, accord-ing to the poet, First Class men are few andfar between. It was wh