26 FEBRUARY 1870, Page 3

The atmosphere of America reduces all the most romantic things

to matter of fact. We have long known that ghosts get them- aelves photographed (gratis, by the way), and take great delight in flinging about furniture and committing practical jokes of the -commonestkind ; but it is new to find them haunting railways, and actually using false signals in order to teaze the guards of trains. The engineer of a night train on the Boston and Lowell Railway, —so the Boston papers assert,—has recently been stopped several times from entering the Woburn station by seeing a red light swung furiously. On sending on to learn why he is stopped, he gets for answer that no light has been exhibited, and the light certainly vanishes as the messenger approaches. Another time the ghost imitated the approach of an imaginary train, to frighten some workmen on the line, who fled accordingly. The theory is, that a man killed there two years ago is now revenging himself on society by these false alarms. It is really an alarming prospect. If these disembodied malcontents have got as far as exhibiting red lights and imitating express trains, they will surely work the telegraphs next, and not to the advantage of Government. We hope the movement won't extend to Ireland ! We should indeed be helpless then. We couldn't even suspend the Habeas Corpus for Fenian ghosts. For them it has been already suspended.