nd
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_.

Mortified and angered beyond endurance, I for the first time addressed
the spirits,--wrenched for the moment into a profound belief that they
must be spirits indeed.

"Whatever you are, and wherever you are," I shouted, bringing my hand
down hard upon the table, "go out of this room and let us alone!"

The only reply was a furious mazourka of all the dishes on the table. A
gentleman present, who had, as he afterward told us, studied the subject
of spiritualism somewhat, very sceptically and with unsatisfactory
results, observed the performance keenly, and suggested that I should
try a gentler method of appeal. Whatever the agent was,--and what it was
he had not yet discovered,--he had noticed repeatedly that the quiet
modes of meeting it were most effective.

Rather amused, I spoke more softly, addressing the caster, and
intimating in my blandest manner that I and my guests would feel under
obligations if we could have the room to ourselves till after we had
dined. The disturbance gradually ceased, and we had no more of it that
day.

A morning or two after Alison chanced to leave half a dozen teaspoons
upon the sideboard in the breakfast-room; they were of solid silver, and
quite thick. She was going to rub them herself, I believe, and went into
the china-closet, which opens from the room, for the silver-soap. The
breakfast-room was left vacant, and it was vacant when she returned to
it, and she insists, with a quiet conviction which it is hardly
reasonable to doubt, that no human being did or could have entered the
room without her knowledge. When she came back to the sideboard every
one of those spoons lay there _bent double_. She showed them to me when
I came home at noon. Had they been pewter toys they could not have been
more completely twisted out of shape than they were. I took them without
any remarks (I began to feel as if this mystery were assuming
uncomfortable proportions), put them away, just as I found them, into a
small cupboard in the wall of the breakfast-room, locked the cupboard
door with the only key in the house which fitted it, put the key in my
inner vest pocket, and meditatively ate my dinner.

About half an hour afterward a neighbor dropped in to groan over the
weather and see the baby, and Allis chanced to mention the incident o