New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-04-07
SPECTERS on THE RAMPAGE.

|
parts Of the country, and tho departed seem
to be unusually dissatisfied with their sub
tcrrone lodgings. Many pine cottage Is con-
verified into q gray and grim Elsnore, While
people who never read line of Hamlet in
their lives experience the same astonishment
which cOnvulsed his princely legs and arms
From the rarcst, ghosts have become the COM
monest Of visitors; they drop in of morn
ing; they call of an evening; and, in some
instances, mako themselves just as dis
agreeable rs if they were members
Of the family. When these unsubstanlal
citizens of Upperdom or Of Nethordom began
this business, it was in somewhat shy and
suppressed way. They were heard, but they
would by no means permit Themselves to be
seen; and the shades of Alexander the Great
and Of John Quncy Adams were not above
lurking in the great toe OF pretty young
woman-and small blanc to them for that
same! Emboldened, perhaps, by their hospi-
table reception, and feeling that knocks
| had become no novelty, the spirits
proceeded to tumble over tho tables,
and to invest other furniture with
strange powers of lOcOmOtiOn. Then fol-
| lowed the funniest revelations in writing,
and tho untying of the hardest knots; and
when the dear creatures knew that it would
| not brighten III to DEATH they revealed them
| selves in full figure, and quite as ready as the
living usually are to sit for their photographs.
| All this we consider to be an Improvement.
| When Pa comes back in the pantalOons which
we know SO we'll, or Ma in the very
dress which she wore tho day before
her demise, tho : apparition is not 80
alarming, and tho phenomenon great
deal coscr. When dcfunct relative enters,
and sits down, or walks Familiarity up stairs,
and does everything except eat his breakfast,
we may be sure that his appetite will return
| in time, though he may have lost it in eternity
and that soon he will be pegglng away at the
morning mullins and playing as pretty knife
and fork as anybody. There is ghost in a
Western town-previous condition OF servitude
not stated-who, if we may trust the news
papers of the vicinage, actually saws the family
wood. He will split it next, and kindly bring
it TO the fireside.
| We confess that we regard the ghost who Is
visible to the naked eye as most satisfactory.
If he is humbug, he is easily caught and ex-
posed for the more material and practical the
frauds undertaken the sooner they will be de-
tected. If ghost be honorable and we'll
meaning, let him como ont and show hims elf!
Our old friend of Denmark might have kicked
up Robbery in the sub-cellar Of the castle,
and so bothered everybody extremely; but
| quite superior TO such housing ways,
and scOrning, notwithstanding his Ger
trude's conduct, to derango her furniture,
he staked boldly on to the platform, like
modern refOrmer, and made a speech about
| which there could be no mistake. How much
| handsOmer this than the conduct Of ghost
at present haunting the house of a respectable
butcher in Dayton, Ohio! He arrives usually
about midnight. lie shakes the windows; he
rattles the dishes; he filings about the chairs /;
| and on one occasion he actually lifted two OF
the butchers daughters out Of bed, though
we believe that he has not yet tried his hand
at rehanging the butchers pictures. Since that
time, we arc told, "nobedy has been able to
"sleep in that bed" The noise which the
visitor makes is compared by expert observers
to "the crying of twenty-fOur babies;" and
yet he is invisible, as indeed the loudess babies
frequently are. All if the butcher could only
get at him with cleaver! Bat what can be
done when an unseen scoundrel like this in
yades the premises of an honest man in the
middle of the night, and not only keeps every
body awake, but frightens peoples souls
well nigh out of their shaking bodiesf
Policemen cannot arrest him clubs cannot
hit him; nor can he DO taken firmly by the
collar and elected from the front door. In
this case they have done what they could;
they have had an old woman in to pray at
| him, and ar old man to swear at him; but
the resources of piety and profanity have
proved, we gricve to say, alike Intellectual.
The latest report is that the frightened flesh
monger had spoken OF joining the church
but that, we take it, was only his talk
| There are mysterious scampa. however, who
can be caught and clustered. In Philadelphia,
as we read is o mulatto necromancer, living
| in o magnificently furnished "palace" of en-
chantment, who for twenty years has been
making money out of the fears of the foolish
and the weaknesses of tho credulous. He
not only tells the fortunes of silly girls, but
he sells them an infallible composition, war
ranted purely vegetable, which, worn upon
the female person. renders the wearcr
irresistibly beautiful in tho eyes of
the man of her choice. This dusky
sharper is visited by hundreds of
women young and not young Seated upon a
throne in chair of state, surrounded by o
deal of brilliant drapery and clothed in a
Roman toga this merchant of mysteries vends
"charms" at four shillings charm. and has
been doing so for the twenty years aforesaid.
He, moreover, "has nose like the bill of an
"eagle,D and greatly we should like to see it
sticking through the bars Of cage. With
mention of this yellow magician we leave the
subject. We might make many hard remarks
about the soft side of human nature, but we