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The ghosts of their ancestors — Background and Themes

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In Category - Young Readers Enchanted Adventures

Authors: Mills, Weymer Jay, 1880-1938, Rae, John, 1882-1963 [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2011 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Ghosts -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 16,447

Reading time 72 min

Text sections 3

For The ghosts of their ancestors — Background and Themes, the stored edition analysis reports 16,447 words, 1 hr 12 min estimated reading time, and 3 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 16.4 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Ghosts -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #36991

An editorial note on Weymer Jay Mills's 1906 novel, focusing on its layered structure, recurring bell imagery, and movement between domestic interiors and snowy streets in post-Revolutionary New York.

Editorial Edition Score 4.5/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg36991

Read the Text

There was a clanging, brassy melody upon the air. For three-score years since York of the Scarlet Coats died, and the tune "God Save the King" floated for the last time out of tavern door and mansion window, the bells of old St. Paul's had begun their ringing like this:

"Loud and full voiced at eight o'clock sends good cheer abroad," said the tottering sexton. "Softer and softer, as folks turn into bed, and faint and sweet at midnight, when our dear Lord rises with the dawn." Cheery bells full of hope--gentle chimes, as if the holy mother were dreaming of her babe. Joyous, jingling, jangling bells! Through the town their tones drifted, over the thousands of slate-colored roofs, now insistent on the Broadway, now lessening a little in some long winding alley, and then finally dying away on the bare Lispenard Meadows.

Vesey Street--the gentry street--heard them first. The bigwigs in the long ago, with the help of Gracious George, built the church, and who had a better right than their children to its voices. Calm and serene lay Vesey Street with its rows of leafing elms. Over the dim confusion of architectural forms slipped the moonlight in silver ribbons, seeming to make sport of the grave, smug faces of the antiquated domiciles. Like a line of deserted dowagers waiting for some recalcitrant Sir Roger de Coverley, they stood scowling at one another. No longer linkboys and running footmen stuck brave lights into the well-painted extinguishers at each doorstep. No longer fashion fluttered to their gates. The gallants who had been wont to pass them with, "Lud! what a pretty house!" were most of them asleep now on the green breast of mother England, forgetful of that wide thoroughfare, which had never reckoned life without them.

Into the parlor of Knickerbocker House, dubbed Knickerbocker Mansion some years after the bibulous Sir William Howe had laid down his sceptre as ruler of the town, the chorus of bells crashed.

"What a dastardly noise!" cried Jonathan Knickerbocker, throwing his newspaper over his head. "Can this Easter time never be kept without an infernal bell bombilation? I shall call a meeting of the vestry--that idiot Jenkins should be kept at home!"

The head of the Knickerbocker family turned irately in his chair and glared at his daughters. Three timid pairs of blinking eyes were raised from short sacks in answer to his challenge, then lowered again over the wool. The fourth and fairest daughter of the house, seated on the walnut sofa in the bow-window, gave no heed to his vehemence but a suppressed sigh. With a final snort the _Gazette_ was picked up again. The Easter melody was waning.

The Knickerbocker parlor--not the state parlor, which had long been closed--was a dismal place--so large that four candles and one Rumford lamp made but a patch of brightness in the gloom. Most of the furniture was ponderous and ugly, with two or three alien little chairs that looked as if they might once have belonged to some light-hearted lover of the Louis. On the almost barren chimney-piece stood a pair of tall nankeen beakers, sepulchrally reminiscent of buried Chinese years. Along the walls hung a score of mediocre portraits, the handiwork of the usurious limner John Watson and his compatriot Hessilius. Spans of sunlit days had stolen every tinge of carmine from their immobile and woodeny faces, leaving them the drab color of time, in keeping with the room.

Above the cornice, near the sofa where Patricia Knickerbocker sat, hung an empty frame. The portrait it contained had been banished to the attic while her three eldest sisters were still in Wellington pantalets.

"The woman looks like a Jezebel," Jonathan had sputtered. "Och! that leering smile." He tried to blot from his mind the stray leaves he knew of her story, and the disturbing thought that she was of his blood. "She shall not remain with the likenesses of my ancestors!" he had told his sisters, who were over from Goby House.

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The novel opens with a precise sonic event: the bells of old St. Paul's ringing at eight o'clock, their tones drifting over slate roofs and dying away on the Lispenard Meadows. This auditory motif recurs throughout the excerpts, threading together scenes that shift between the Knickerbocker parlor, the Snograss House, and the snowy streets of Vesey Street. The bells serve as both a temporal marker and a connective tissue, linking the characters' domestic anxieties to the broader cityscape.

Mills builds the narrative through a series of abrupt transitions—from the sexton's lyrical description of the bells to Jonathan Knickerbocker's irritable complaint about the "infernal bell bombilation." These shifts in register and perspective create a layered texture, where the past intrudes on the present through memory, portraits, and the very architecture of the city.

Bell Tones and Urban Soundscape

The bells of St. Paul's are not mere background noise; they are a structural device. The opening paragraph establishes a pattern of sound moving through space: "over the thousands of slate-colored roofs, now insistent on the Broadway, now lessening a little in some long winding alley." This auditory geography maps the city, from the gentry street of Vesey to the bare meadows. Later, the bells "crash" into the Knickerbocker parlor, provoking Jonathan's outburst. The sound returns at the climax of the excerpt, when Georgina's violent knocking on the door "reverberated through the night, clashing against the bell-notes." The bells thus frame the action, providing a rhythmic pulse that underscores the characters' agitation.

Movement Through Thresholds

The narrative is built around a series of crossings: from parlor to street, from house to house, from present to memory. Julie and Georgina's journey to the Snograss House is described as a stumble "through the snow" past "huts and houses," with warm windows beckoning. The movement is physical and psychological—Georgina's mind is fixed on Patricia's secret, while Julie recalls a dancing master. The return journey is marked by a sudden apparition: "a shadowy mocking face was rising up before her," the face of the banished ancestress. This threshold crossing culminates in the violent knocking at the Knickerbocker door, where the bolt is drawn and the "gale-blown humanity" bursts in. Each transition is accompanied by a shift in sensory detail—from the lilac branches in the garden to the wind buffeting the aunts' faces.

Portraits and Ancestral Presence

The portrait of the ancestress, taken down from the parlor wall by Jonathan, becomes a spectral force. Georgina sees its face rising before her in the night, and the image is linked to the family's suppressed history. The novel's title, The Ghosts of Their Ancestors, is literalized in this moment: the past does not stay buried. The portrait is not merely a decorative object but a catalyst for the aunts' terror. Mills uses the device of the banished portrait to suggest that the Knickerbocker family's attempts to control their lineage—through ancestry books and selective memory—are fragile. The face that appears to Georgina is described as "shadowy" and "mocking," a reminder that the dead have their own agency.

Voice and Register Shifts

Mills employs a distinctive blend of formal narration and colloquial dialogue. The opening description is ornate: "Calm and serene lay Vesey Street with its rows of leafing elms." Yet Jonathan's speech is blunt and irritable: "What a dastardly noise!" The aunts' conversation is peppered with exclamations and rhetorical questions: "Are your wits leaving you, Jerusalem?" The narrator also adopts a knowing tone, referring to the "bibulous Sir William Howe" and the "horn of plenty on the door." These shifts in register create a layered voice that moves between mock-heroic and domestic realism. The effect is a narrative that is both arch and immediate, never settling into a single mode.

Readers attentive to the novel's structure will notice how Mills uses recurring images—bells, portraits, thresholds—to bind together a story that moves rapidly between interior and exterior, past and present. The excerpts suggest a work that is as much about the texture of early nineteenth-century New York as about the Knickerbocker family's secrets. Pay particular attention to the way sound and space are mapped; they are not decorative but functional, guiding the reader through the narrative's abrupt shifts.

Reading about the bells threading through those snow-filled New York streets, I found myself thinking of a much later trek, the eager tramp of khaki scouts toward their own small adventures. It’s a different era, surely, but both carry that same quiet pulse of belonging—hearing a familiar sound, stepping out into the cold, and feeling a ghost of the past walk beside you. Great Hike; or, The Pride of the Khaki Troop — Background and Themes holds that echo for me.