The Angel of the Odd: An Extravaganza
IT was a chilly November afternoon. I had just consummated an unusually hearty dinner,
of which the dyspeptic truffe formed not the least important item, and was sitting alone in
the dining-room, with my feet upon the fender, and at my elbow a small table which I had
rolled up to the fire, and upon which were some apologies for dessert, with some
miscellaneous bottles of wine, spirit and liqueur. In the morning I had been reading
Glover's "Leonidas," Wilkie's "Epigoniad," Lamartine's "Pilgrimage," Barlow's
"Columbiad," Tuckermann's "Sicily," and Griswold's "Curiosities" ; I am willing to
confess, therefore, that I now felt a little stupid. I made effort to arouse myself by aid of
frequent Lafitte, and, all failing, I betook myself to a stray newspaper in despair. Having
carefully perused the column of "houses to let," and the column of "dogs lost," and then
the two columns of "wives and apprentices runaway," I attacked with great resolution the
editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable,
conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the
beginning, but with no more satisfactory result. I was about throwing away, in disgust,
Which not even critics criticise,"
when I felt my attention somewhat aroused by the paragraph which follows :
"The avenues to death are numerous and strange. A London paper mentions the
decease of a person from a singular cause. He was playing at 'puff the dart,' which is
played with a long needle inserted in some worsted, and blown at a target through a tin
tube. He placed the needle at the wrong end of the tube, and drawing his breath strongly
to puff the dart forward with force, drew the needle into his throat. It entered the lungs,
and in a few days killed him."
Upon seeing this I fell into a great rage, without exactly knowing why. "This thing," I
exclaimed, "is a contemptible falsehood --- a poor hoax --- the lees of the invention of
some pitiable penny-a-liner --- of some wretched concoctor of accidents in Cocaigne.
These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the
imagination of improbable possibilities --- of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a
reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger
unconsciously to the side of my nose), "to a contemplative understanding such as I
myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd
accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe
nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it."
