ll his money, whatever it might be, to the
young girl who has since that established such a claim upon him. He did
not, however. A considerable bequest to one of our public institutions
keeps his name in grateful remembrance. The telescope through which he
was fond of watching the heavenly bodies, and the movements of which had
been the source of such odd fancies on my part, is now the property of a
Western College. You smile as you think of my taking it for a fleshless
human figure, when I saw its tube pointing to the sky, and thought it
was an arm, under the white drapery thrown over it for protection. So do
I smile now; I belong to the numerous class who are prophets after the
fact, and hold my nightmares very cheap by daylight.
I have received many letters of inquiry as to the sound resembling a
woman's voice, which occasioned me so many perplexities. Some thought
there was no question that he had a second apartment, in which he had
made an asylum for a deranged female relative. Others were of opinion
that he was, as I once suggested, a "Bluebeard" with patriarchal
tendencies, and I have even been censured for introducing so Oriental an
element into my record of boarding-house experience.
Come in and see me, the Professor, some evening when I have nothing
else to do, and ask me to play you Tartini's Devil's Sonata on that
extraordinary instrument in my possession, well known to amateurs as one
of the masterpieces of Joseph Guarnerius. The vox humana of the great
Haerlem organ is very lifelike, and the same stop in the organ of the
Cambridge chapel might be mistaken in some of its tones for a human
voice; but I think you never heard anything come so near the cry of
a prima donna as the A string and the E string of this instrument. A
single fact will illustrate the resemblance. I was executing some tours
de force upon it one evening, when the policeman of our district rang
the bell sharply, and asked what was the matter in the house. He
had heard a woman's screams,--he was sure of it. I had to make the
instrument sing before his eyes before he could be satisfied that he had
not heard the cries of a woman. The instrument was bequeathed to me by
the Little Gentleman. Whether it had anything to do with the sounds I
heard coming from his chamber, you can form your own opinion;--I have no
other conjecture to offer. It is not true that a second apartment with
a secret entrance was found; and the story of the veiled lady i
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