Cook as Twynintuft:—"I am Mister Twynintuft. I set lots by you all. I left my bright spirit-home to come here to-day. The squashes was musty afore they was brought into the house. No blame to the cook. Them pickled termarterses couldn't keep into spring, and so I tell you now. The spheres is a dry place, and everythin' is most a-beautiful here."
Betty, the housemaid, loquitur.—(She appears in the character of Red-Jacket, a popular personation upon these occasions,—it being very easy to talk Indian by the simple recipe of transposing the nominative and objective cases of the personal pronoun.) "Me don't like what you say, old Twyney! I's name's Red-Jacket. Pale-face give fire-water to I. The squashes was good enough till cook left 'em out in the rain. Me have hunting-ground in fifth sphere. When me puts up tomatoes in the spirit-world, me rosins 'em when they bile. Great influence comes from I to-day; also, much development."
"Dr. Burge," whispered I, "you claim to have devoted some time to the examination of these delusions; but I will venture to say you have never witnessed anything so humiliating as this!"
"My dear Sir," murmured the Doctor in return, "the remark shows you to be a novice indeed. Why, I have listened to hours of no better drivel than this, fathered, not upon Indians and unknown elocutionists, but upon some of the wisest and most saintly spirits whose mortal teachings ever blessed mankind."
"Do you think these people voluntary impostors?"
"No; it would be nearer the truth to say that they are voluntary victims of a mental epidemic like that which developed itself in the St. Vitus's dance of the Middle Ages. The subjects of that disease went through the same spasms, convulsions, and painful racking of the limbs which accompany such cases of this personation as are not designed deceptions. Even those accidentally present, when the effects of the ancient contagion were exhibited, became infected and were irresistibly impelled to join in the extravagance. Look at Miss Turligood and Mr. Stellato, and see if the parallel is not supported."
The individuals named were seen to be twisting themselves up and making an awkward sort of obeisance to the housemaid, who (still as Red-Jacket) thus delivered herself:—
"Me goin' to dancey war-dance. Great Spirit sends lots more Indians come dancey too."
A cry of acquiescence,—perchance intended for a ghostly war-whoop,—and the beloved of my Lord Byron broke into a savage polka.
Stellato seized a paper-knife, and proceeded to scalp a chair with merciless ferocity.