31 JANUARY 1920, Page 19

A Thin Ghost and Others. By M. R. James. (Edward

Arnold. 4s. 6d.)—Some seventy years ago there lived in London a young brother and sister who christened their favourite book of ghost stories Sights and Frights. The "thin ghost" and his fellows are worthy to rank with the terrors of that classic volume. Not only are the studies written with a distinction of style to which the reader of similar works is totally unaccustomed, but the Provost of Eton has managed to impart a most authentio feeling of alarming eeriness to the apparitions which he so vividly describes. The Elemental Being who mews in the Cathedral close at night is perhaps the most horrifying of the manifesta- tions, but the present writer owns that this notice is of set purpose written by daylight at 2 p.m. and would not on any

* Worm. in a Teacup. By Eden Phillpotts. London : Idelnemann. (76. neLl

account be attempted after dinner, lest the near approach of bedtime should reader the necessary references to the book too hazardous.