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Page 43
The following day, just after dinner, I was writing in the library, when
a child's cry of fright and pain startled me. It seemed to come from the
little yard behind the house, and I hurried thither to behold a singular
sight. There was one apple-tree in the yard,--an old, stunted, crooked
thing; and in that tree I found my son and heir, Tip, tied fast with a
small stout rope. "Tied" does not express it; he was gagged, manacled,
twisted, contorted, wound about, crossed and recrossed, held without a
chance of motion, scarcely of breath.
"You never tied yourself up here, child?" I asked, as I cut the knots.
The question certainly was unnecessary. No juggler could have bound
himself in such a fashion; scarcely, then, a four-years' child. To my
continued, clear, and gentle inquiries, the boy replied, persistently
and consistently, that nobody tied him there,--"not Cousin Gertrude, nor
Bridget, nor the baby, nor mamma, nor Jane, nor papa, nor the black
kitty"; he was "just tooken up all at once into the tree, and that was
all there was about it." He "s'posed it must have been God, or something
like that, did it."
Poor Tip had a hard time of it. Two days after that, while his mother
and I sat discussing the incident, and the child was at play upon the
floor, he suddenly threw himself at full length, writhing with pain, and
begging to "have them pulled out quick!"
"Have _what_ pulled out?" exclaimed his terrified mother. She took the
child into her lap, and found that he was stuck over from head to foot
with large white pins.
"We haven't so many large pins in all the house," she said as soon as he
was relieved.
As she spoke the words thirty or forty _small_ pins pierced the boy.
Where they came from no one could see. How they came there no one knew.
We looked, and there they were, and Tip was crying and writhing as
before.
For the remainder of that winter we had scarcely a day of quiet. The
rumor that "the Hotchkisses had rented a haunted house" leaked out and
spread abroad. The frightened servants gave warning, and other
frightened servants took their place, to leave in turn. My wife was her
own cook and nursery-maid a quarter of the time. The disturbances varied
in character with every week, assuming, as time went on, an importunity
which, had we not quietly settled it in our own minds "not to be beaten
by a noise," would have driven us from the house.
Night after night the mysterious fingers rapped at the windows, the
doors, the floors, the walls. Day after day uncomfortable tricks were
sprung upon us by invisible agencies. We became used to the noises, so
that we slept through them easily; but many of the phenomena were so
strikingly unpleasant, and so singularly unsuited to the ordinary
conditions of human happiness and housekeeping, that we scarcely
became--as one of our excellent deacons had a cheerful habit of
exhorting us to become--"resigned."
Upon one occasion we had invited a small and select number of friends to
dine. It was to be rather a _recherch�_ affair for Nemo's Avenue, and my
wife had spared no painstaking to suit herself with her table. We had
had a comparatively quiet house the night before, so that our cook, who
had been with us three days, consented to remain till our guests had
been provided for. The soup was good, the pigeons better, the bread was
_not_ sour, and Allis looked hopeful, and inclined to trust Providence
for the gravies and dessert.
It was just as I had begun to carve the beef that I observed my wife
suddenly pale, and a telegram from her eyes turned mine in the direction
of General Popgun, who sat at her right hand. My sensations "can better
be imagined than described" when I saw General Popgun's fork, untouched
by any human hand, dancing a jig on his plate. He grasped it and laid it
firmly down. As soon as he released his hold it leaped from the table.
"Really--aw--very singular phenomena," began the General; "very
singular! I was not prepared to credit the extraordinary accounts of
spiritual manifestations in this house, but--aw--Well, I must say--"
Instantly it was Pandemonium at that dinner-table. Dr. Jump's knife,
Mrs. M'Ready's plate, and Colonel Hope's tumbler sprang from their
places. The pigeons flew from the platter, the caster rattled and
rolled, the salt-cellars bounded to and fro, and the gravies, moved by
some invisible disturber, spattered all over Mrs. Elias P. Critique's
_moire antique_.
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