Having written of The Gates Ajar, and The Gates Beyond, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps now turns her attention to those between, —meaning, perhaps, those between this world and the next, — though there is some obscurity on this point.
As a speculative fiction, her story has interest. A physician marries his ideal, whom he meets among the mountains. One day, in a weary moment, he uses some harsh and hasty words. On his way to the hospital, within the half-hour, he is killed. After wandering about for awhile, able to go everywhere except to his old home, the dead man finds his boy in Heaven, and through him is gradually led to renounce his former unbelief.
As a serious presentation of thought, Miss Phelps's book is hardly worth much attention. Of course it is unscientific, in every sense of that word. The Doctor's ghost can tamper with the lock of a State-Street door, so that the police notice it; he can move paper about, and write the name of the loved wife; yet this same ghost can not ring an electric bell, can neither make himself heard nor felt. In fact, he is so powerless a spectre that he can not influence the minds of those whom he meets, and is unable to recognize his own child. We exclaim, at once, with Hamlet, "Alas, poor ghost! "
