"
Well, my grandfather had been for some time absent from his room, and
was returning, perfectly cool, when just as he reached the door he
heard a strange noise within. He paused and listened. It seemed as if
some one was trying to hum a tune in defiance of the asthma. He
recollected the report of the room's being haunted; but he was no
believer in ghosts. So he pushed the door gently ajar, and peeped in.
Egad, gentlemen, there was a gambol carrying on within enough to have
astonished St. Anthony.
By the light of the fire he saw a pale weazen-faced fellow in a long
Flannel gown and a tall white night-cap with a tassel to it, who sat by
the fire, with a bellows under his arm by way of bagpipe, from which he
forced the asthmatical music that had bothered my grandfather. As he
played, too, he kept twitching about with a thousand queer contortions;
nodding his head and bobbing about his tasselled night-cap.
My grandfather thought this very odd, and mighty presumptuous, and was
about to demand what business he had to play his wind instruments in
another gentleman's quarters, when a new cause of astonishment met his
eye. From the opposite side of the room a long-backed, bandy-legged
chair, covered with leather, and studded all over in a coxcomical
fashion with little brass nails, got suddenly into motion; thrust out
first a claw foot, then a crooked arm, and at length, making a leg,
slided gracefully up to an easy chair, of tarnished brocade, with a
hole in its bottom, and led it gallantly out in a ghostly minuet about
the floor.
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