In the safe sheltered comfort of a winter's fire

as the title suggests, these stories of horror will rouse tolerable shudders; but elsewhere they had best be avoided. They are worse than ghost stories, for they haunt the mind even more than they work on the nerves.

Even the cheerful nightmares among them, like "Dinah's Mammoth," and such flippant ones as "William Tyrwhitt's 'Copy,' have this effect.

(Google Books)