rying to hum a tune in defiance of the asthma. He
recollected the report of the room's being haunted; but he was no
believer in ghosts. So he pushed the door gently ajar, and peeped in.

Egad, gentlemen, there was a gambol carrying on within enough to have
astonished St. Anthony.

By the light of the fire he saw a pale weazen-faced fellow in a long
Flannel gown and a tall white night-cap with a tassel to it, who sat by
the fire, with a bellows under his arm by way of bagpipe, from which he
forced the asthmatical music that had bothered my grandfather. As he
played, too, he kept twitching about with a thousand queer contortions;
nodding his head and bobbing about his tasselled night-cap.

My grandfather thought this very odd, and mighty presumptuous, and was
about to demand what business he had to play his wind instruments in
another gentleman's quarters, when a new cause of astonishment met his
eye. From the opposite side of the room a long-backed, bandy-legged
chair, covered with leather, and studded all over in a coxcomical
fashion with little brass nails, got suddenly into motion; thrust out
first a claw foot, then a crooked arm, and at length, making a leg,
slided gracefully up to an easy chair, of tarnished brocade, with a
hole in its bottom, and led it gallantly out in a ghostly minuet about
the floor.

The musician now played fiercer and fiercer, and bobbed his head and
His nightcap about like mad. By degrees the dancing mania seemed to
seize upon all the other pieces of furniture. The antique, long-bodied
chairs paired off in couples and led down a country dance; a
three-legged stool danced a hornpipe, though horribly puzzled by its
supernumerary leg; while the amorous tongs seized the shovel round the
waist, and whirled it about the room in a German waltz. In short, all
the moveables got in motion, capering about; pirouetting, hands across,
right and left, like so many devils, all except a great clothes-press,
which kept curtseying and curtseying, like a dowager, in one corner, in
exquisite time to the music;--being either too corpulent to dance, or
perhaps at a loss for a partner.

My grandfather concluded the latter to be the reason; so, being, like a
true Irishman, devoted to the sex, and at all times ready for a frolic,
he bounced into the room, calling to the musician to strike up "Paddy
O'Rafferty," capered up to the clothes-press and seized upon two
handles to lead her out:--When, whizz!--the whole