Spirits of waiters, soldiers, tailors (Damphool trembled), babies,
saloon-keepers, dancers, actors, widows, circus-riders, in fact all
varieties of obstreperous sprites, began to play the devil with things
generally.
The dining table jumped up, turned two somersets, and landed with one
leg in the widow's lap, one in Damphool's mouth, and the other two on
the toes of the sanctimonious-looking individuals opposite.
The washstand exhibited strong symptoms of a desire to dance the Jenny
Lind polka on Bull Dogge's head.
The book-case beat time with extraordinary vigor, and made faces at the
company generally.
Our walking canes and umbrellas promenaded round the room in couples,
without the slightest regard to corns or other pedal vegetables; while
the bedstead in the corner was extemporizing a comic song, with a
vigorous accompaniment on the soap-dish, the wash-dish, and other
bed-room furniture.
Bull Dogge here made a rush for the door, and dashed wildly down
Broadway, pursued, as he avers to this day, by the spirit of an
Irishman, with a pickaxe, a handsaw, and a ghostly wheelbarrow.
Concluding I had seen enough, I took Damphool and B. D----'s bottle
(empty, or he would never have left it), and went home, satisfied that
"there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of," except
by lying "_mediums_," so called; who too lazy to work, and too cowardly
to get an honorable living by stealing, adopt this method to sponge
their bread and butter out of those, whom God in his mysterious wisdom
has seen fit to send on earth weak enough to believe their idiotic
ravings.
XXX.
Special Express from Dog Paradise--A Canine Ghost.
I regret the strong language used in the preceding chapter, for since it
was penned I have become a firm believer in ghosts, "spheres," saltatory
furniture, and the other doctrines of professed Spiritualists.
It is a solemn truth that I, Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P.B., although
neither a doctor, clergyman, nor Judge of the Supreme Court, have
received a visit from the spirits. The secrets of the other world have
been partially revealed to me.
I have had a glimpse of horse-heaven--a very fair view of the very
blissful residence of pigs and poultry, and been vouchsafed a key-hole
peep at the paradise of Spiritual Jackassdom.
I have discovered that Esop is a reliable historian, and I find that in
a future world the power and liberty of quadrupedal speech will be
restored in all its pristine euphony and elegance. Listen, wonder, and
believe!
Some time since, I had a beloved and beautiful bull-terrier--(not the
Bull Dogge alluded to in other epistles,) he was perfect in every
point--his hair stuck out in multitudinous directions--his snarl was of
the crossest--his teeth of the sharpest, and his ordinary behavior
exhibited a general and impartial hatred of mankind. He was a canine
Ishmael, for every man's hand was against him. His cognomen savored of
the satanic. I called him Pluto.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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