1. The Preble Piano
Miss Preble had one of the first pianos in Sullivan and played it often. When she died, her house was left to a cousin coming up from Saco. In the meantime, Miss Preble’s house and belongings were left untouched.
A few months after Miss Preble’s passing, a peddler came to town. David Blaisdell, one of Miss Preble’s neighbors, watched the peddler ring the doorbell of the Preble house, then rap on the side window and call inside, to no avail. Then the peddler came over to Dave’s place, looking alarmed.
As Aunt Nebbie Havey recalled to Samuel Scovill Jr., the conversation went something like this:
“That ol’ lady, she be of a deafness extraordinaire,” he says.
“What old lady,” Dave says.
“Why, the one who live in ze house opposite,” goes on the peddler. “She sit in front of ze piano, but she don’t play, nor do she hear, though I rap an’ rap on ze window an’ call out loud to her.”
“What did she look like?” goes on Dave, feeling kind of sick.
“She have ze white hair an’ wear ze white mantilla on her head, an’ she have a kind face, but very sad,” says the peddler.
After the other man had left, Dave mustered all his strength and walked up on Miss Preble’s porch and peered through the window. Nothing looked unusual, except one thing: the piano, which had been closed ever since Miss Preble died, was wide open.
Source: Sullivan and Sorrento Since 1760 by Lelia Clark Johnson, 1953. The dialogue comes from Samuel Scovill Jr.’s essay, “The Preble Piano,” which first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, May 1930, and is included in Johnson’s book.