arch was made, but with no better success. One or two
nights of quietude might intervene between those on which such sounds
were heard; but they still broke at intervals through the stillness of
midnight--at one time with note by note, slowly--at another, like the
quick, loud thundering of a battle-piece; till the horrible conviction
filled every mind, that the house was haunted. One morning, the piano
was heard sounding away much louder than usual; and the dawn having
begun to peep through the window-blinds, one or two of the family,
summoning up the courage that comes with the light of day, resolved
that, "ghost, if ghost it were," they should at all risks have a peep at
it, and cautiously descended to the door of the apartment, which was
slightly ajar. The musician was fingering the instrument with the
greatest industry and energy, and apparently at his own entire
satisfaction. Well, after much demurring, in they peeped; and most
assuredly, through the dim dusk of the morning, a gray figure was seen
exerting itself most strenuously. They looked closer, when, behold,
there was--what think you?--the cat, pawing away, first with her fore
feet, and then with her hind; now touching one note gently, and then
dancing with all fours across the keys. There was a solution of the
enigma--a bringing to light of the imagined ghost.

A traveler in one of the Western States relates the following humorous
anecdote of a wild cat: "I was plodding once in a wagon from Toledo to
Maumee, over an execrably level road, in the hot noon sun of a mid-June
day. The driver was a hardy fellow, who looked as though he could outhug
a bear, and loosen the tightest Maumee ague with a single shake, and yet
he owned he had been frightened by a wild cat, so that he ran from it,
and then he told the story, which I give you partly in his own words: 'I
was driving along this road in a buggy, with as fast a horse as ever
scorned the whip, when some ten rods ahead of us, just by that big oak,
a wild cat, leading three kittens, came out of the wood, crossed the
road, and went into those bushes on our left, and I thought what nice
pets they would make, and wished I had one. When I came up, I noticed
one of the young ones in the edge of the bushes, but a few feet off, and
I heard, or thought I heard, the old one stealing along deep in the
woods. I sprang out, snatched up the kitten, threw it into the buggy,
jumped in, and started. When I laid hands on it, it me