Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

THE GHOST EXTINGUISHER by GELETT BURGESS (1905)

Today marks the 159th anniversary of Gelett Burgess's birth.

Gelett Burgess was a writer and humorist best known for hiss poem that began "I never saw a purple cow."

He also coined the word "Blurb" and was the first to use the term bromide to describe an stodgy person who says boring things.  Burgess also created the famous "Goops" (Goops, and How to Be Them; Goops, and How Not to Be Them; Goops Tales, Alphabetically Told; Blue Goops and Red; The Goop Directory; Why Be a Goop?; The Goop Songbook; New Goops and How to Know Them).  His 1912 collection of mystery short stories, Master of Mysteries, was included in Queen's Quorum of the most important volumes of detective and mystery short stories; it was recently released as a Library of Congress Crime Classic.  

"The Ghost Extinguisher," a classic humorous ghost story, was first published The Cosmopolitan, April 1905.

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