The Fiddle That Haunted a Kitchen

A very amusing scene, which illustrates the superstition of the colored people on the peninsula, occurred in the kitchen of a hotel at Milford a few nights ago. A lad had been playing a few tunes on an old violin, and the others had been dancing in a merry mood. When bedtime arrived, the boy hung his fiddle near the window. All were in the act of retiring when low strains were heard to issue from the fiddle, which was not touched by human hands. There was at once a general stampede from the house out into the snow, and cries that the fiddle was bewitched. One man said it was the ghost of Samuel who was murdered a few weeks since, and another declared he recognized the shades of his dead father. Finally, the bravest peered into the kitchen, heard the fiddle still making mysterious sounds, and getting a pole, he knocked it from the nail and burned it. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that a current of air was playing upon the violin.