terialized it, maybe, just as they did the tambourine.
You don't suppose a quiet New York lawyer kept a stock of musical
instruments large enough to fit out a strolling minstrel troupe just on
the chance of a pair of ghosts coming to give him a surprise party, do
you? Every spook has its own instrument of torture. Angels play on
harps, I'm informed, and spirits delight in banjos and tambourines.
These spooks of Eliphalet Duncan's were ghosts with all the modern
improvements, and I guess they were capable of providing their own
musical weapons. At all events, they had them there in the little old
house at Salem the night Eliphalet and his friend came down. And they
played on them and they rang the bell, and they rapped here, there, and
everywhere. And they kept it up all night."

"All night?" asked the awe-stricken Duchess.

"All night long," said Uncle Larry solemnly; "and the next night, too.
Eliphalet did not get a wink of sleep, neither did his friend. On the
second night the house ghost was seen by the officer; on the third
night it showed itself again; and the next morning the officer packed
his grip-sack and took the first train to Boston. He was a New Yorker,
but he said he'd sooner go to Boston than see that ghost again.
Eliphalet, he wasn't scared at all, partly because he never saw either
the domiciliary or the titular spook, and partly because he felt
himself on friendly terms with the spirit world, and didn't scare
easily. But after losing three nights' sleep and the society of his
friend, he began to be a little impatient, and to think that the thing
had gone far enough. You see, while in a way he was fond of ghosts, yet
he liked them best one at a time. Two ghosts were one too many. He
wasn't bent on making a collection of spooks. He and one ghost were
company, but he and two ghosts were a crowd."

"What did he do?" asked Baby Van Rensselaer.

"Well, he couldn't do anything. He waited awhile, hoping they would get
tired; but he got tired out first. You see, it comes natural to a spook
to sleep in the daytime, but a man wants to sleep nights, and they
wouldn't let him sleep nights. They kept on wrangling and quarreling
incessantly; they manifested and they dark-seanced as regularly as the
old clock on the stairs struck twelve; they rapped and they rang bells
and they banged the tambourine and they threw the flaming banjo about
the house, and worse than all, they swore."

"I did not know that spirits we