Presented together in this collection are two stories by Herman Melville: a satire on spiritualism that examines the conflicting impressions of the members of a family of a bug-infested table and a reflection on the contrast between the pleasant life of rich bachelors and the alienation of enslaved young women. In “The Apple-Tree Table,” the narrator brings down a table and book of witchcraft stories he finds in the garret of his old house, long believed to be haunted. Strange sounds come from the table before 150-year-old bugs begin to emerge from it, inspiring daughter Julia to believe the creatures are a symbol of the resurrection. “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” points out the outrageous differences between two groups by juxtaposing the lavish dinner of a group of young, single male lawyers, scholars, and writers in London in the first part with a visit to a paper factory in a nearly inaccessible mountain village where young women toil under subhuman conditions in the second.