ow forehead and the high cheek-bones.
It stayed only an instant, but Sam said, "That's the way Bott will look
in----"

"Hush!" said Maud, who was growing too nervous to smile, for fear of
laughing or crying.

A sound of sobbing came from a seat to the right of them. A poor woman
had recognized the face as that of her husband, who had died in the
army, and she was drawing the most baleful inferences from its fiery
adjuncts.

A moment later, Bott came out of the closet, crouching so low that his
head was hardly two feet from the ground. He had a sheet around his
neck, covering his whole person, and a white cap over his head,
concealing most of his face. In this constrained attitude he hopped
about the clear space in front of the audience with a good deal of
dexterity, talking baby-talk in a shrill falsetto. "Howdy, pappa!
Howdy, mamma! Itty Tudie tum adin!"

A rough man and woman, between joy and grief, were half hysterical.
They talked to the toad-like mountebank in the most endearing tones,
evidently believing it was their dead baby toddling before them. Two or
three times the same horrible imposture was repeated. Bott never made
his appearance without somebody recognizing him as a dear departed
friend. The glimmering light, the unwholesome excitement, the servile
credulity fixed by long habit, seemed to produce a sort of passing
dementia upon the regular habitues.

With these performances the first part came to an end. The light was
turned on again, and the tying committee was requested to come forward
and examine the cords with which Bott still seemed tightly bound. The
skeptic remained scornfully in his seat, and so it was left for the
believer to announce that not a cord had been touched. He then untied
Bott, who came out from the closet, stretching his limbs as if glad to
be free, and announced that there would be a short intermission for an
interchange of views.

As he came toward Maud, Sam rose and said:

"Whew! he smells like a damp match. I'll go out and smoke a minute, and
come back."

Bott dropped into the seat which Sleeny had left.

To one who has never attended one of these queer _cenacula_, it would
be hard to comprehend the unhealthy and even nauseous character of the
feeling and the conversation there prevalent. The usual decent
restraints upon social intercourse seem removed. Subjects which the
common consent of civilized creatures has banished from mixed society
are freely opened and di