habitants
of the little village of Hardscrabble as the report spread through the
community that a real piano had actually arrived within its precincts.

Speculation was afloat as to its appearance and its use. The name was
familiar to everybody; but what it precisely meant, no one could tell.
That it had legs was certain; for a stray volume of some literary
traveler was one of the most conspicuous works in the floating library
of Hardscrabble, and said traveler stated that he had seen a piano
somewhere in New England with pantalets on; also, an old foreign paper
was brought forward, in which there was an advertisement headed
"Soiree," which informed the "citizens, generally," that Mr. Bobolink
would preside at the piano.

This was presumed by several wiseacres, who had been to a menagerie, to
mean that Mr. Bobolink stirred the piano with a long pole, in the same
way that the showman did the lions and rhi-no-ce-rus.

So, public opinion was in favor of its being an animal, though a
harmless one; for there had been a land-speculator through the village a
few weeks previously, who distributed circulars of a "Female Academy"
for the accomplishment of young ladies. These circulars distinctly
stated "the use of the piano to be one dollar per month."

One knowing old chap said, if they would tell him what so-i-ree meant,
he would tell them what a piano was, and no mistake.

The owner of this strange instrument was no less than a very quiet and
very respectable late merchant of a little town somewhere "north," who,
having failed at home, had emigrated into the new and hospitable country
of Arkansas, for the purpose of bettering his fortune and escaping the
heartless sympathy of his more lucky neighbors, who seemed to consider
him a very bad and degraded man because he had become honestly poor.

The new-comers were strangers, of course. The house in which they were
setting up their furniture was too little arranged "to admit of calls;"
and, as the family seemed very little disposed to court society, all
prospects of immediately solving the mystery that hung about the piano
seemed hopeless. In the meantime, public opinion was "rife."

The depository of this strange thing was looked upon by the passers-by
with indefinable awe; and, as noises unfamiliar sometimes reached the
street, it was presumed that the piano made them, and the excitement
rose higher than ever. In the midst of it, one or two old ladies,
presuming upon the