The crying room—a fancy of certain Northern homes, earlier in the century—is simply a chamber off the parlor, to which the despairing might repair. Its dimensions—approximating, in this case, those of the coat closet—are quite inhospitable, all in all. Shall we measure the sounds and then place them under glass? After the fashion of the villain, who captures the daughter’s voice on a fragment of windowpane. And now a carriage—a landau or a victoria or a shooting brake—crosses the stage from left to right, in the company of a lost schoolboy and a singer with fits.

We might count the cracking axles—as wagons make ghastly passage through a field and a woods. The tenor bells, in a later example, are perhaps more tragic—or so the diagrams imply. The tone survives as a single line, alongside the wrong house. Its pattern—one short, three long: something akin to a boy’s name—can be scratched into a bedroom wall. The gouge and the claw hammer: these are found in a brown cabinet. But Mother’s cutlery remains the envy of the family. The tongue of a shoe—having been removed with poultry shears, incidentally—is set atop the doorstep, aimed gracefully at the enemy.

Pose them on the chaise, the wire dolls, but ignore the creatures on the wall—manufactured, as they are, by the afternoon shadows. We need not confuse these with the children. William and Audrey, in any case, have given way to Richard and Vivian—late once again for luncheon. A wind-up device—bright metal—alters the voice, or disguises it. Flies, by now, have arrived in the front room, where the son undertakes his recitation, listing the names of various persons and afflictions, until the vowels become rattling sounds, their pitch very much higher at night.

The hornets arrive, I trust, at a more opportune moment, in a distant town, where they might explain an apparition, for instance, or a bafflement at the cannon house. Other superstitions explain the forked tongue, yes—if not the bees on the drapery, fastened there with a bone stitch. The needles, in the small hours, produce a curious noise on the stairs. Shall we measure the vestibule, west to east? The corpse will be along shortly. The children, in proper costume, perform three death scenes—but the light advances too grandly from the corners of the stage, erasing all the faces.