[It is said that the Psychical Society could find no authentic stories of ghosts in Boston, U.S.A.]
Not a ghost in bumptious Boston! Do the souls of men whose books,
So they tell us, outshine Dickens, rise superior to "spooks"?
Do the phantoms, having read them, fly in terror and in pain
At the cult of vivisection of La belle Américaine?
Howells puffs up Dudley Warner, who declares his Howells fine.
Do the spectres hate "log-rolling," and to haunt the place decline?
Are there no ghosts in New England? Really, this is something new.
Where did famous Rip van Winkle see old Hudson's phantom crew?
Are the Katskills now unhaunted, where those silent elders bowled,