'Sir,' Mr Otis answered Lord Canterville, 'I will take the furniture and the ghost if the price is fair. I come from a modern country, where we have everything that you can get with money.'

'I think that if there really was a ghost anywhere in Europe, our young men would take it back home to America. We would have the ghost in one of our public museums, or maybe we would take it around the country for people to look at for money.'

'I am afraid that the ghost is real,' said Lord Canterville, smiling, 'though it may not listen when your young men ask it to go to the United States. People have known about the ghost for three hundred years, since 1584. The ghost always appears before someone in my family dies.'

'Well, the family doctor also appears at that time, doesn't he? Lord Canterville, there is no such thing as a ghost!'

'Ghosts don't exist in nature and I don't believe that nature is going to change just so that a British Lord can have a ghost.'