MILLS, Weymer Jay. The Ghosts of their Ancestors. New York: Fox Duffield and Co. 1906.
First Edition. (120 x 170mm) pp. 143. Green publisher’s binding with gilt title and coloured paste-down illustration. Checked green pastedowns. Illustrations throughout. Listed in Bleiler 1178. Overall in VERY GOOD condition.
In Bleiler’s masterwork of The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, he provides a short summary of this Turn of the Century romance/surprising moralizing tale/ ghost story:
Romance in early Federalist New York. * Old Knickerbocker has four daughters, three of whom follow his precepts, while the fourth, Patricia, is rebellious. Patricia determines to marry a church organist, a man whom her father considers unacceptable, forbidding the match. But the ancestors, whom old Knickerbocker holds in high reverence and is often quoting, take a hand. The ghost of his great great grandmother comes and summons the present family to a hearing. The ancestral ghosts are not as Knickerbocker thought, for they find against him and for Patricia. He thereupon gives his consent. * Routine.