e landlord was a spiteful little
man, whose sour, pinched look was a standing libel upon the state of his
larder. He made his house so uncomfortable by his moroseness that
travellers even at nightfall pushed by his door and drove to the next
town. Teamsters and drovers, who in those days were apt to be very
thirsty, learned, even before temperance societies were thought of, to
practice total abstinence on that road, and cracked their whips and
goaded on their teams in full view of a most tempting array of bottles
and glasses, from behind which the surly little landlord glared out upon
them with a look which seemed expressive of all sorts of evil wishes,
broken legs, overturned carriages, spavined horses, sprained oxen,
unsavory poultry, damaged butter, and bad markets. And if, as a matter
of necessity, to "keep the cold out of his stomach," occasionally a
wayfarer stopped his team and ventured to call for "somethin' warmin',"
the testy publican stirred up the beverage in such a spiteful way, that,
on receiving it foaming from his hand, the poor customer was half afraid
to open his mouth, lest the red-hot flip iron should be plunged down his
gullet.

As a matter of course, poverty came upon the house and its tenants like
an armed man. Loose clapboards rattled in the wind; rags fluttered from
the broken windows; within doors were tattered children and scanty fare.
The landlord's wife was a stout, buxom woman, of Irish lineage, and,
what with scolding her husband and liberally patronizing his bar in his
absence, managed to keep, as she said, her "own heart whole," although
the same could scarcely be said of her children's trousers and her own
frock of homespun. She confidently predicted that "a betther day was
coming," being, in fact, the only thing hopeful about the premises. And
it did come, sure enough. Not only all the regular travellers on the
road made a point of stopping at the tavern, but guests from all the
adjacent towns filled its long-deserted rooms,--the secret of which was,
that it had somehow got abroad that a company of fairies had taken up
their abode in the hostelry and daily held conversation with each other
in the capacious parlor. I have heard those who at the time visited the
tavern say that it was literally thronged for several weeks. Small,
squeaking voices spoke in a sort of Yankee-Irish dialect, in the haunted
room, to the astonishment and admiration of hundreds. The inn, of
course, was