The Enchanted Typewriter

by John Kendrick Bangs




I

THE DISCOVERY




It is a strange fact, for which I do not expect ever
satisfactorily to account, and which will receive little
credence even among those who know that I am not given to
romancing--it is a strange fact, I say, that the substance of
the following pages has evolved itself during a period of six
months, more or less, between the hours of midnight and four
o'clock in the morning, proceeding directly from a type-writing
machine standing in the corner of my library, manipulated by
unseen hands. The machine is not of recent make. It is, in fact,
a relic of the early seventies, which I discovered one morning
when, suffering from a slight attack of the grip, I had remained
at home and devoted my time to pottering about in the attic,
unearthing old books, bringing to the light long-forgotten
correspondences, my boyhood collections of "stuff," and other
memory-inducing things. Whence the machine came originally I do
not recall. My impression is that it belonged to a stenographer