Why not, occasionally, a cheerful Ghost.

But to return to our ghosts.  These four gentlemen must now and again, during their earthly existence, have sat down to a merry game of cards.  There must have been evenings when nobody was stabbed.  Why choose an unpleasant occasion to harp exclusively upon it?  Why do ghosts never give a cheerful show?  The lady who was poisoned! there must have been other evenings in her life.  Why does she not show us “The first meeting”: when he gave her the violets and said they were like her eyes?  He wasn’t always poisoning her.  There must have been a period before he ever thought of poisoning her.  Cannot these ghosts do something occasionally in what is termed “the lighter vein”?  If they haunt a forest glade, it is to perform a duel to the death, or an assassination.  Why cannot they, for a change, give us an old-time picnic, or “The hawking party,” which, in Elizabethan costume, should make a pretty picture?  Ghostland would appear to be obsessed by the spirit of the Scandinavian drama: murders, suicides, ruined fortunes, and broken hearts are the only material made use of.  Why is not a dead humorist allowed now and then to write the sketch?  There must be plenty of dead comic lovers; why are they never allowed to give a performance?