Chapter V: Part 5

_Originality:_—Your diddler is original—conscientiously so. His
thoughts are his own. He would scorn to employ those of another.
A stale trick is his aversion. He would return a purse, I am
sure, upon discovering that he had obtained it by an unoriginal
diddle.

_Impertinence:_—Your diddler is impertinent. He swaggers. He sets
his arms a-kimbo. He thrusts his hands in his trowsers’ pockets.
He sneers in your face. He treads on your corns. He eats your
dinner, he drinks your wine, he borrows your money, he pulls your
nose, he kicks your poodle, and he kisses your wife.

_Grin:_—Your true diddler winds up all with a grin. But this
nobody sees but himself. He grins when his daily work is
done—when his allotted labors are accomplished—at night in his
own closet, and altogether for his own private entertainment. He
goes home. He locks his door. He divests himself of his clothes.
He puts out his candle. He gets into bed. He places his head upon
the pillow. All this done, and your diddler grins. This is no
hypothesis. It is a matter of course. I reason _à priori_, and a
diddle would be no diddle without a grin.

The origin of the diddle is referrable to the infancy of the
Human Race. Perhaps the first diddler was Adam. At all events, we
can trace the science back to a very remote period of antiquity.
The moderns, however, have brought it to a perfection never
dreamed of by our thick-headed progenitors. Without pausing to
speak of the “old saws,” therefore, I shall content myself with a
compendious account of some of the more “modern instances.”

A very good diddle is this. A housekeeper in want of a sofa, for
instance, is seen to go in and out of several cabinet warehouses.
At length she arrives at one offering an excellent variety. She
is accosted, and invited to enter, by a polite and voluble
individual at the door. She finds a sofa well adapted to her
views, and upon inquiring the price, is surprised and delighted
to hear a sum named at least twenty per cent. lower than her
expectations. She hastens to make the purchase, gets a bill and
receipt, leaves her address, with a request that the article be
sent home as speedily as possible, and retires amid a profusion
of bows from the shopkeeper. The night arrives and no sofa. A
servant is sent to make inquiry about the delay. The whole
transaction is denied. No sofa has been sold—no money
received—except by the diddler, who played shop-keeper for the
nonce.

Our cabinet warehouses are left entirely unattended, and thus
afford every facility for a trick of this kind. Visitors enter,
look at furniture, and depart unheeded and unseen. Should any one
wish to purchase, or to inquire the price of an article, a bell
is at hand, and this is considered amply sufficient.

Again, quite a respectable diddle is this. A well-dressed
individual enters a shop, makes a purchase to the value of a
dollar; finds, much to his vexation, that he has left his
pocket-book in another coat pocket; and so says to the
shopkeeper—

“My dear sir, never mind; just oblige me, will you, by sending
the bundle home? But stay! I really believe that I have nothing
less than a five dollar bill, even there. However, you can send
four dollars in change with the bundle, you know.”

“Very good, sir,” replies the shop-keeper, who entertains, at
once, a lofty opinion of the high-mindedness of his customer. “I
know fellows,” he says to himself, “who would just have put the
goods under their arm, and walked off with a promise to call and
pay the dollar as they came by in the afternoon.”

A boy is sent with the parcel and change. On the route, quite
accidentally, he is met by the purchaser, who exclaims:

“Ah! This is my bundle, I see—I thought you had been home with
it, long ago. Well, go on! My wife, Mrs. Trotter, will give you
the five dollars—I left instructions with her to that effect. The
change you might as well give to me—I shall want some silver for
the Post Office. Very good! One, two, is this a good
quarter?—three, four—quite right! Say to Mrs. Trotter that you
met me, and be sure now and do not loiter on the way.”

The boy doesn’t loiter at all—but he is a very long time in
getting back from his errand—for no lady of the precise name of
Mrs. Trotter is to be discovered. He consoles himself, however,
that he has not been such a fool as to leave the goods without
the money, and re-entering his shop with a self-satisfied air,
feels sensibly hurt and indignant when his master asks him what
has become of the change.

A very simple diddle, indeed, is this. The captain of a ship,
which is about to sail, is presented by an official looking
person with an unusually moderate bill of city charges. Glad to
get off so easily, and confused by a hundred duties pressing upon
him all at once, he discharges the claim forthwith. In about
fifteen minutes, another and less reasonable bill is handed him
by one who soon makes it evident that the first collector was a
diddler, and the original collection a diddle.

And here, too, is a somewhat similar thing. A steamboat is
casting loose from the wharf. A traveller, portmanteau in hand,
is discovered running toward the wharf, at full speed. Suddenly,
he makes a dead halt, stoops, and picks up something from the
ground in a very agitated manner. It is a pocket-book, and—“Has
any gentleman lost a pocketbook?” he cries. No one can say that
he has exactly lost a pocket-book; but a great excitement ensues,
when the treasure trove is found to be of value. The boat,
however, must not be detained.

“Time and tide wait for no man,” says the captain.

“For God’s sake, stay only a few minutes,” says the finder of the
book—“the true claimant will presently appear.”

“Can’t wait!” replies the man in authority; “cast off there, d’ye
hear?”

“What _am_ I to do?” asks the finder, in great tribulation. “I am
about to leave the country for some years, and I cannot
conscientiously retain this large amount in my possession. I beg
your pardon, sir,” [here he addresses a gentleman on shore,] “but
you have the air of an honest man. _Will_ you confer upon me the
favor of taking charge of this pocket-book—I _know_ I can trust
you—and of advertising it? The notes, you see, amount to a very
considerable sum. The owner will, no doubt, insist upon rewarding
you for your trouble—”

“_Me!_—no, _you!_—it was you who found the book.”

“Well, if you _must_ have it so—_I_ will take a small reward—just
to satisfy your scruples. Let me see—why these notes are all
hundreds—bless my soul! a hundred is too much to take—fifty would
be quite enough, I am sure—”

“Cast off there!” says the captain.

“But then I have no change for a hundred, and upon the whole,
_you_ had better—”

“Cast off there!” says the captain.

“Never mind!” cries the gentleman on shore, who has been
examining his own pocket-book for the last minute or so—“never
mind! _I_ can fix it—here is a fifty on the Bank of North
America—throw the book.”

And the over-conscientious finder takes the fifty with marked
reluctance, and throws the gentleman the book, as desired, while
the steamboat fumes and fizzes on her way. In about half an hour
after her departure, the “large amount” is seen to be a
“counterfeit presentment,” and the whole thing a capital diddle.

A bold diddle is this. A camp-meeting, or something similar, is
to be held at a certain spot which is accessible only by means of
a free bridge. A diddler stations himself upon this bridge,
respectfully informs all passers by of the new county law, which
establishes a toll of one cent for foot passengers, two for
horses and donkeys, and so forth, and so forth. Some grumble but
all submit, and the diddler goes home a wealthier man by some
fifty or sixty dollars well earned. This taking a toll from a
great crowd of people is an excessively troublesome thing.

A neat diddle is this. A friend holds one of the diddler’s
promises to pay, filled up and signed in due form, upon the
ordinary blanks printed in red ink. The diddler purchases one or
two dozen of these blanks, and every day dips one of them in his
soup, makes his dog jump for it, and finally gives it to him as a
bonne bouche. The note arriving at maturity, the diddler, with
the diddler’s dog, calls upon the friend, and the promise to pay
is made the topic of discussion. The friend produces it from his
escritoire, and is in the act of reaching it to the diddler, when
up jumps the diddler’s dog and devours it forthwith. The diddler
is not only surprised but vexed and incensed at the absurd
behavior of his dog, and expresses his entire readiness to cancel
the obligation at any moment when the evidence of the obligation
shall be forthcoming.

A very mean diddle is this. A lady is insulted in the street by a
diddler’s accomplice. The diddler himself flies to her
assistance, and, giving his friend a comfortable thrashing,
insists upon attending the lady to her own door. He bows, with
his hand upon his heart, and most respectfully bids her adieu.
She entreats him, as her deliverer, to walk in and be introduced
to her big brother and her papa. With a sigh, he declines to do
so. “Is there no way, then, sir,” she murmurs, “in which I may be
permitted to testify my gratitude?”

“Why, yes, madam, there is. Will you be kind enough to lend me a
couple of shillings?”

In the first excitement of the moment the lady decides upon
fainting outright. Upon second thought, however, she opens her
purse-strings and delivers the specie. Now this, I say, is a
diddle minute—for one entire moiety of the sum borrowed has to be
paid to the gentleman who had the trouble of performing the
insult, and who had then to stand still and be thrashed for
performing it.

Rather a small but still a scientific diddle is this. The diddler
approaches the bar of a tavern, and demands a couple of twists of
tobacco. These are handed to him, when, having slightly examined
them, he says:

“I don’t much like this tobacco. Here, take it back, and give me
a glass of brandy and water in its place.” The brandy and water
is furnished and imbibed, and the diddler makes his way to the
door. But the voice of the tavern-keeper arrests him.

“I believe, sir, you have forgotten to pay for your brandy and
water.”

“Pay for my brandy and water!—didn’t I give you the tobacco for
the brandy and water? What more would you have?”

“But, sir, if you please, I don’t remember that you paid me for
the tobacco.”

“What do you mean by that, you scoundrel?—Didn’t I give you back
your tobacco? Isn’t that your tobacco lying there? Do you expect
me to pay for what I did not take?”

“But, sir,” says the publican, now rather at a loss what to say,
“but sir—”

“But me no buts, sir,” interrupts the diddler, apparently in very
high dudgeon, and slamming the door after him, as he makes his
escape.—“But me no buts, sir, and none of your tricks upon
travellers.”

Here again is a very clever diddle, of which the simplicity is
not its least recommendation. A purse, or pocket-book, being
really lost, the loser inserts in one of the daily papers of a
large city a fully descriptive advertisement.

Whereupon our diddler copies the facts of this advertisement,
with a change of heading, of general phraseology and address. The
original, for instance, is long, and verbose, is headed “A
Pocket-Book Lost!” and requires the treasure, when found, to be
left at No. 1 Tom Street. The copy is brief, and being headed
with “Lost” only, indicates No. 2 Dick, or No. 3 Harry Street, as
the locality at which the owner may be seen. Moreover, it is
inserted in at least five or six of the daily papers of the day,
while in point of time, it makes its appearance only a few hours
after the original. Should it be read by the loser of the purse,
he would hardly suspect it to have any reference to his own
misfortune. But, of course, the chances are five or six to one,
that the finder will repair to the address given by the diddler,
rather than to that pointed out by the rightful proprietor. The
former pays the reward, pockets the treasure and decamps.

Quite an analogous diddle is this. A lady of ton has dropped,
some where in the street, a diamond ring of very unusual value.
For its recovery, she offers some forty or fifty dollars
reward—giving, in her advertisement, a very minute description of
the gem, and of its settings, and declaring that, on its
restoration at No. so and so, in such and such Avenue, the reward
would be paid instanter, without a single question being asked.
During the lady’s absence from home, a day or two afterwards, a
ring is heard at the door of No. so and so, in such and such
Avenue; a servant appears; the lady of the house is asked for and
is declared to be out, at which astounding information, the
visitor expresses the most poignant regret. His business is of
importance and concerns the lady herself. In fact, he had the
good fortune to find her diamond ring. But perhaps it would be as
well that he should call again. “By no means!” says the servant;
and “By no means!” says the lady’s sister and the lady’s
sister-in-law, who are summoned forthwith. The ring is
clamorously identified, the reward is paid, and the finder nearly
thrust out of doors. The lady returns and expresses some little
dissatisfaction with her sister and sister-in-law, because they
happen to have paid forty or fifty dollars for a fac-simile of
her diamond ring—a fac-simile made out of real pinch-beck and
unquestionable paste.

But as there is really no end to diddling, so there would be none
to this essay, were I even to hint at half the variations, or
inflections, of which this science is susceptible. I must bring
this paper, perforce, to a conclusion, and this I cannot do
better than by a summary notice of a very decent, but rather
elaborate diddle, of which our own city was made the theatre, not
very long ago, and which was subsequently repeated with success,
in other still more verdant localities of the Union. A
middle-aged gentleman arrives in town from parts unknown. He is
remarkably precise, cautious, staid, and deliberate in his
demeanor. His dress is scrupulously neat, but plain,
unostentatious. He wears a white cravat, an ample waistcoat, made
with an eye to comfort alone; thick-soled cosy-looking shoes, and
pantaloons without straps. He has the whole air, in fact, of your
well-to-do, sober-sided, exact, and respectable “man of
business,” _par excellence_—one of the stern and outwardly hard,
internally soft, sort of people that we see in the crack high
comedies—fellows whose words are so many bonds, and who are noted
for giving away guineas, in charity, with the one hand, while, in
the way of mere bargain, they exact the uttermost fraction of a
farthing with the other.

He makes much ado before he can get suited with a boarding house.
He dislikes children. He has been accustomed to quiet. His habits
are methodical—and then he would prefer getting into a private
and respectable small family, piously inclined. Terms, however,
are no object—only he must insist upon settling his bill on the
first of every month, (it is now the second) and begs his
landlady, when he finally obtains one to his mind, not on any
account to forget his instructions upon this point—but to send in
a bill, and receipt, precisely at ten o’clock, on the first day
of every month, and under no circumstances to put it off to the
second.

These arrangements made, our man of business rents an office in a
reputable rather than a fashionable quarter of the town. There is
nothing he more despises than pretense. “Where there is much
show,” he says, “there is seldom any thing very solid behind”—an
observation which so profoundly impresses his landlady’s fancy,
that she makes a pencil memorandum of it forthwith, in her great
family Bible, on the broad margin of the Proverbs of Solomon.

The next step is to advertise, after some such fashion as this,
in the principal business six-pennies of the city—the pennies are
eschewed as not “respectable”—and as demanding payment for all
advertisements in advance. Our man of business holds it as a
point of his faith that work should never be paid for until done.

“WANTED.—The advertisers, being about to commence extensive
business operations in this city, will require the services of
three or four intelligent and competent clerks, to whom a liberal
salary will be paid. The very best recommendations, not so much
for capacity, as for integrity, will be expected. Indeed, as the
duties to be performed involve high responsibilities, and large
amounts of money must necessarily pass through the hands of those
engaged, it is deemed advisable to demand a deposit of fifty
dollars from each clerk employed. No person need apply,
therefore, who is not prepared to leave this sum in the
possession of the advertisers, and who cannot furnish the most
satisfactory testimonials of morality. Young gentlemen piously
inclined will be preferred. Application should be made between
the hours of ten and eleven A. M., and four and five P. M., of
Messrs.

“Bogs, Hogs, Logs, Frogs & Co.,
“No. 110 Dog Street.”

By the thirty-first day of the month, this advertisement has
brought to the office of Messrs. Bogs, Hogs, Logs, Frogs, and
Company, some fifteen or twenty young gentlemen piously inclined.
But our man of business is in no hurry to conclude a contract
with any—no man of business is ever precipitate—and it is not
until the most rigid catechism in respect to the piety of each
young gentleman’s inclination, that his services are engaged and
his fifty dollars receipted for, just by way of proper
precaution, on the part of the respectable firm of Bogs, Hogs,
Logs, Frogs, and Company. On the morning of the first day of the
next month, the landlady does not present her bill, according to
promise—a piece of neglect for which the comfortable head of the
house ending in ogs would no doubt have chided her severely,
could he have been prevailed upon to remain in town a day or two
for that purpose.

As it is, the constables have had a sad time of it, running
hither and thither, and all they can do is to declare the man of
business most emphatically, a “hen knee high”—by which some
persons imagine them to imply that, in fact, he is n. e. i.—by
which again the very classical phrase _non est inventus_, is
supposed to be understood. In the meantime the young gentlemen,
one and all, are somewhat less piously inclined than before,
while the landlady purchases a shilling’s worth of the Indian
rubber, and very carefully obliterates the pencil memorandum that
some fool has made in her great family Bible, on the broad margin
of the Proverbs of Solomon.

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,

“This folio of four pages, happy work
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.”

“Mein Gott, den, vat a vool you bees for dat!” replied one of the
most remarkable voices I ever heard. At first I took it for a
rumbling in my ears—such as a man sometimes experiences when
getting very drunk—but, upon second thought, I considered the
sound as more nearly resembling that which proceeds from an empty
barrel beaten with a big stick; and, in fact, this I should have
concluded it to be, but for the articulation of the syllables and
words. I am by no means naturally nervous, and the very few
glasses of Lafitte which I had sipped served to embolden me no
little, so that I felt nothing of trepidation, but merely
uplifted my eyes with a leisurely movement, and looked carefully
around the room for the intruder. I could not, however, perceive
any one at all.

“Humph!” resumed the voice, as I continued my survey, “you mus pe
so dronk as de pig, den, for not zee me as I zit here at your
zide.”

Hereupon I bethought me of looking immediately before my nose,
and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a
personage nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His
body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that
character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether
extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the
purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper portion
of the carcass two tolerably long bottles, with the necks outward
for hands. All the head that I saw the monster possessed of was
one of those Hessian canteens which resemble a large snuff-box
with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen (with a funnel
on its top, like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set
on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and
through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a
very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling
and grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible
talk.

“I zay,” said he, “you mos pe dronk as de pig, vor zit dare and
not zee me zit ere; and I zay, doo, you mos pe pigger vool as de
goose, vor to dispelief vat iz print in de print. ’Tiz de
troof—dat it iz—eberry vord ob it.”

“Who are you, pray?” said I, with much dignity, although somewhat
puzzled; “how did you get here? and what is it you are talking
about?”

“Az vor ow I com’d ere,” replied the figure, “dat iz none of your
pizzness; and as vor vat I be talking apout, I be talk apout vat
I tink proper; and as vor who I be, vy dat is de very ting I
com’d here for to let you zee for yourzelf.”

“You are a drunken vagabond,” said I, “and I shall ring the bell
and order my footman to kick you into the street.”

“He! he! he!” said the fellow, “hu! hu! hu! dat you can’t do.”

“Can’t do!” said I, “what do you mean?—I can’t do what?”

“Ring de pell,” he replied, attempting a grin with his little
villanous mouth.

Upon this I made an effort to get up, in order to put my threat
into execution; but the ruffian just reached across the table
very deliberately, and hitting me a tap on the forehead with the
neck of one of the long bottles, knocked me back into the
arm-chair from which I had half arisen. I was utterly astounded;
and, for a moment, was quite at a loss what to do. In the
meantime, he continued his talk.

“You zee,” said he, “it iz te bess vor zit still; and now you
shall know who I pe. Look at me! zee! I am te _Angel ov te Odd_.”

“And odd enough, too,” I ventured to reply; “but I was always
under the impression that an angel had wings.”

“Te wing!” he cried, highly incensed, “vat I pe do mit te wing?
Mein Gott! do you take me vor a shicken?”

“No—oh no!” I replied, much alarmed, “you are no
chicken—certainly not.”

“Well, den, zit still and pehabe yourself, or I’ll rap you again
mid me vist. It iz te shicken ab te wing, und te owl ab te wing,
und te imp ab te wing, und te head-teuffel ab te wing. Te angel
ab _not_ te wing, and I am te _Angel ov te Odd_.”

“And your business with me at present is—is—”

“My pizzness!” ejaculated the thing, “vy vat a low bred buppy you
mos pe vor to ask a gentleman und an angel apout his pizziness!”

This language was rather more than I could bear, even from an
angel; so, plucking up courage, I seized a salt-cellar which lay
within reach, and hurled it at the head of the intruder. Either
he dodged, however, or my aim was inaccurate; for all I
accomplished was the demolition of the crystal which protected
the dial of the clock upon the mantel-piece. As for the Angel, he
evinced his sense of my assault by giving me two or three hard
consecutive raps upon the forehead as before. These reduced me at
once to submission, and I am almost ashamed to confess that
either through pain or vexation, there came a few tears into my
eyes.

“Mein Gott!” said the Angel of the Odd, apparently much softened
at my distress; “mein Gott, te man is eder ferry dronk or ferry
zorry. You mos not trink it so strong—you mos put te water in te
wine. Here, trink dis, like a goot veller, und don’t gry
now—don’t!”

Hereupon the Angel of the Odd replenished my goblet (which was
about a third full of Port) with a colorless fluid that he poured
from one of his hand bottles. I observed that these bottles had
labels about their necks, and that these labels were inscribed
“Kirschenwasser.”

The considerate kindness of the Angel mollified me in no little
measure; and, aided by the water with which he diluted my Port
more than once, I at length regained sufficient temper to listen
to his very extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount
all that he told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was
the genius who presided over the _contretemps_ of mankind, and
whose business it was to bring about the _odd accidents_ which
are continually astonishing the skeptic. Once or twice, upon my
venturing to express my total incredulity in respect to his
pretensions, he grew very angry indeed, so that at length I
considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at all, and let him
have his own way. He talked on, therefore, at great length, while
I merely leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, and amused
myself with munching raisins and filliping the stems about the
room. But, by and by, the Angel suddenly construed this behavior
of mine into contempt. He arose in a terrible passion, slouched
his funnel down over his eyes, swore a vast oath, uttered a
threat of some character which I did not precisely comprehend,
and finally made me a low bow and departed, wishing me, in the
language of the archbishop in Gil-Blas, “_beaucoup de bonheur et
un peu plus de bon sens_.”

His departure afforded me relief. The _very_ few glasses of
Lafitte that I had sipped had the effect of rendering me drowsy,
and I felt inclined to take a nap of some fifteen or twenty
minutes, as is my custom after dinner. At six I had an
appointment of consequence, which it was quite indispensable that
I should keep. The policy of insurance for my dwelling house had
expired the day before; and, some dispute having arisen, it was
agreed that, at six, I should meet the board of directors of the
company and settle the terms of a renewal. Glancing upward at the
clock on the mantel-piece, (for I felt too drowsy to take out my
watch), I had the pleasure to find that I had still twenty-five
minutes to spare. It was half past five; I could easily walk to
the insurance office in five minutes; and my usual siestas had
never been known to exceed five and twenty. I felt sufficiently
safe, therefore, and composed myself to my slumbers forthwith.

Having completed them to my satisfaction, I again looked toward
the time-piece and was half inclined to believe in the
possibility of odd accidents when I found that, instead of my
ordinary fifteen or twenty minutes, I had been dozing only three;
for it still wanted seven and twenty of the appointed hour. I
betook myself again to my nap, and at length a second time awoke,
when, to my utter amazement, it _still_ wanted twenty-seven
minutes of six. I jumped up to examine the clock, and found that
it had ceased running. My watch informed me that it was half past
seven; and, of course, having slept two hours, I was too late for
my appointment. “It will make no difference,” I said: “I can call
at the office in the morning and apologize; in the meantime what
can be the matter with the clock?” Upon examining it I discovered
that one of the raisin stems which I had been filliping about the
room during the discourse of the Angel of the Odd, had flown
through the fractured crystal, and lodging, singularly enough, in
the key-hole, with an end projecting outward, had thus arrested
the revolution of the minute hand.

“Ah!” said I, “I see how it is. This thing speaks for itself. A
natural accident, such as _will_ happen now and then!”

I gave the matter no further consideration, and at my usual hour
retired to bed. Here, having placed a candle upon a reading stand
at the bed head, and having made an attempt to peruse some pages
of the “Omnipresence of the Deity,” I unfortunately fell asleep
in less than twenty seconds, leaving the light burning as it was.

My dreams were terrifically disturbed by visions of the Angel of
the Odd. Methought he stood at the foot of the couch, drew aside
the curtains, and, in the hollow, detestable tones of a rum
puncheon, menaced me with the bitterest vengeance for the
contempt with which I had treated him. He concluded a long
harangue by taking off his funnel-cap, inserting the tube into my
gullet, and thus deluging me with an ocean of Kirschenwässer,
which he poured, in a continuous flood, from one of the long
necked bottles that stood him instead of an arm. My agony was at
length insufferable, and I awoke just in time to perceive that a
rat had ran off with the lighted candle from the stand, but _not_
in season to prevent his making his escape with it through the
hole. Very soon, a strong suffocating odor assailed my nostrils;
the house, I clearly perceived, was on fire. In a few minutes the
blaze broke forth with violence, and in an incredibly brief
period the entire building was wrapped in flames. All egress from
my chamber, except through a window, was cut off. The crowd,
however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder. By means of
this I was descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a
huge hog, about whose rotund stomach, and indeed about whose
whole air and physiognomy, there was something which reminded me
of the Angel of the Odd,—when this hog, I say, which hitherto had
been quietly slumbering in the mud, took it suddenly into his
head that his left shoulder needed scratching, and could find no
more convenient rubbing-post than that afforded by the foot of
the ladder. In an instant I was precipitated and had the
misfortune to fracture my arm.

This accident, with the loss of my insurance, and with the more
serious loss of my hair, the whole of which had been singed off
by the fire, predisposed me to serious impressions, so that,
finally, I made up my mind to take a wife. There was a rich widow
disconsolate for the loss of her seventh husband, and to her
wounded spirit I offered the balm of my vows. She yielded a
reluctant consent to my prayers. I knelt at her feet in gratitude
and adoration. She blushed and bowed her luxuriant tresses into
close contact with those supplied me, temporarily, by Grandjean.
I know not how the entanglement took place, but so it was. I
arose with a shining pate, wigless; she in disdain and wrath,
half buried in alien hair. Thus ended my hopes of the widow by an
accident which could not have been anticipated, to be sure, but
which the natural sequence of events had brought about.

Without despairing, however, I undertook the siege of a less
implacable heart. The fates were again propitious for a brief
period; but again a trivial incident interfered. Meeting my
betrothed in an avenue thronged with the _élite_ of the city, I
was hastening to greet her with one of my best considered bows,
when a small particle of some foreign matter, lodging in the
corner of my eye, rendered me, for the moment, completely blind.
Before I could recover my sight, the lady of my love had
disappeared—irreparably affronted at what she chose to consider
my premeditated rudeness in passing her by ungreeted. While I
stood bewildered at the suddenness of this accident, (which might
have happened, nevertheless, to any one under the sun), and while
I still continued incapable of sight, I was accosted by the Angel
of the Odd, who proffered me his aid with a civility which I had
no reason to expect. He examined my disordered eye with much
gentleness and skill, informed me that I had a drop in it, and
(whatever a “drop” was) took it out, and afforded me relief.

I now considered it high time to die, (since fortune had so
determined to persecute me,) and accordingly made my way to the
nearest river. Here, divesting myself of my clothes, (for there
is no reason why we cannot die as we were born), I threw myself
headlong into the current; the sole witness of my fate being a
solitary crow that had been seduced into the eating of
brandy-saturated corn, and so had staggered away from his
fellows. No sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it
into its head to fly away with the most indispensable portion of
my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my suicidal
design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of
my coat, and betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the
nimbleness which the case required and its circumstances would
admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full
speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon
the purloiner of my property, I suddenly perceived that my feet
rested no longer upon _terra-firma_; the fact is, I had thrown
myself over a precipice, and should inevitably have been dashed
to pieces but for my good fortune in grasping the end of a long
guide-rope, which depended from a passing balloon.

As soon as I sufficiently recovered my senses to comprehend the
terrific predicament in which I stood or rather hung, I exerted
all the power of my lungs to make that predicament known to the
æronaut overhead. But for a long time I exerted myself in vain.
Either the fool could not, or the villain would not perceive me.
Meantime the machine rapidly soared, while my strength even more
rapidly failed. I was soon upon the point of resigning myself to
my fate, and dropping quietly into the sea, when my spirits were
suddenly revived by hearing a hollow voice from above, which
seemed to be lazily humming an opera air. Looking up, I perceived
the Angel of the Odd. He was leaning with his arms folded, over
the rim of the car; and with a pipe in his mouth, at which he
puffed leisurely, seemed to be upon excellent terms with himself
and the universe. I was too much exhausted to speak, so I merely
regarded him with an imploring air.

For several minutes, although he looked me full in the face, he
said nothing. At length removing carefully his meerschaum from
the right to the left corner of his mouth, he condescended to
speak.

“Who pe you,” he asked, “und what der teuffel you pe do dare?”

To this piece of impudence, cruelty and affectation, I could
reply only by ejaculating the monosyllable “Help!”

“Elp!” echoed the ruffian—“not I. Dare iz te pottle—elp yourself,
und pe tam’d!”

With these words he let fall a heavy bottle of Kirschenwasser
which, dropping precisely upon the crown of my head, caused me to
imagine that my brains were entirely knocked out. Impressed with
this idea, I was about to relinquish my hold and give up the
ghost with a good grace, when I was arrested by the cry of the
Angel, who bade me hold on.

“Old on!” he said; “don’t pe in te urry—don’t. Will you pe take
de odder pottle, or ave you pe got zober yet and come to your
zenzes?”

I made haste, hereupon, to nod my head twice—once in the
negative, meaning thereby that I would prefer not taking the
other bottle at present—and once in the affirmative, intending
thus to imply that I _was_ sober and _had_ positively come to my
senses. By these means I somewhat softened the Angel.

“Und you pelief, ten,” he inquired, “at te last? You pelief, ten,
in te possibilty of te odd?”

I again nodded my head in assent.

“Und you ave pelief in _me_, te Angel of te Odd?”

I nodded again.

“Und you acknowledge tat you pe te blind dronk and te vool?”

I nodded once more.

“Put your right hand into your left hand preeches pocket, ten, in
token ov your vull zubmizzion unto te Angel ov te Odd.”

This thing, for very obvious reasons, I found it quite impossible
to do. In the first place, my left arm had been broken in my fall
from the ladder, and, therefore, had I let go my hold with the
right hand, I must have let go altogether. In the second place, I
could have no breeches until I came across the crow. I was
therefore obliged, much to my regret, to shake my head in the
negative—intending thus to give the Angel to understand that I
found it inconvenient, just at that moment, to comply with his
very reasonable demand! No sooner, however, had I ceased shaking
my head than—

“Go to der teuffel, ten!” roared the Angel of the Odd.

In pronouncing these words, he drew a sharp knife across the
guide-rope by which I was suspended, and as we then happened to
be precisely over my own house, (which, during my peregrinations,
had been handsomely rebuilt,) it so occurred that I tumbled
headlong down the ample chimney and alit upon the dining-room
hearth.

Upon coming to my senses, (for the fall had very thoroughly
stunned me,) I found it about four o’clock in the morning. I lay
outstretched where I had fallen from the balloon. My head
grovelled in the ashes of an extinguished fire, while my feet
reposed upon the wreck of a small table, overthrown, and amid the
fragments of a miscellaneous dessert, intermingled with a
newspaper, some broken glass and shattered bottles, and an empty
jug of the Schiedam Kirschenwasser. Thus revenged himself the
Angel of the Odd.

[Mabbott states that Griswold “obviously had a revised form” for
use in the 1856 volume of Poe’s works. Mabbott does not
substantiate this claim, but it is surely not unreasonable. An
editor, and even typographical errors, may have produced nearly
all of the very minor changes made in this version. (Indeed, two
very necessary words were clearly dropped by accident.) An editor
might have corrected “Wickliffe’s ‘Epigoniad’” to “Wilkie’s
‘Epigoniad’,” but is unlikely to have added “Tuckerman’s
‘Sicily’” to the list of books read by the narrator. Griswold was
not above forgery (in Poe’s letters) when it suited his purpose,
but would have too little to gain by such an effort in this
instance.]

MELLONTA TAUTA

TO THE EDITORS OF THE LADY’S BOOK:

I have the honor of sending you, for your magazine, an article
which I hope you will be able to comprehend rather more
distinctly than I do myself. It is a translation, by my friend,
Martin Van Buren Mavis, (sometimes called the “Poughkeepsie
Seer”) of an odd-looking MS. which I found, about a year ago,
tightly corked up in a jug floating in the Mare Tenebrarum—a sea
well described by the Nubian geographer, but seldom visited
now-a-days, except for the transcendentalists and divers for
crotchets.

Truly yours,

EDGAR A. POE

{this paragraph not in the volume—ED}

ON BOARD BALLOON “SKYLARK”

_April_, 1, 2848

Now, my dear friend—now, for your sins, you are to suffer the
infliction of a long gossiping letter. I tell you distinctly that
I am going to punish you for all your impertinences by being as
tedious, as discursive, as incoherent and as unsatisfactory as
possible. Besides, here I am, cooped up in a dirty balloon, with
some one or two hundred of the canaille, all bound on a pleasure
excursion, (what a funny idea some people have of pleasure!) and
I have no prospect of touching terra firma for a month at least.
Nobody to talk to. Nothing to do. When one has nothing to do,
then is the time to correspond with ones friends. You perceive,
then, why it is that I write you this letter—it is on account of
my ennui and your sins.

Get ready your spectacles and make up your mind to be annoyed. I
mean to write at you every day during this odious voyage.

Heigho! when will any Invention visit the human pericranium? Are
we forever to be doomed to the thousand inconveniences of the
balloon? Will nobody contrive a more expeditious mode of
progress? The jog-trot movement, to my thinking, is little less
than positive torture. Upon my word we have not made more than a
hundred miles the hour since leaving home! The very birds beat
us—at least some of them. I assure you that I do not exaggerate
at all. Our motion, no doubt, seems slower than it actually
is—this on account of our having no objects about us by which to
estimate our velocity, and on account of our going with the wind.
To be sure, whenever we meet a balloon we have a chance of
perceiving our rate, and then, I admit, things do not appear so
very bad. Accustomed as I am to this mode of travelling, I cannot
get over a kind of giddiness whenever a balloon passes us in a
current directly overhead. It always seems to me like an immense
bird of prey about to pounce upon us and carry us off in its
claws. One went over us this morning about sunrise, and so nearly
overhead that its drag-rope actually brushed the network
suspending our car, and caused us very serious apprehension. Our
captain said that if the material of the bag had been the
trumpery varnished “silk” of five hundred or a thousand years
ago, we should inevitably have been damaged. This silk, as he
explained it to me, was a fabric composed of the entrails of a
species of earth-worm. The worm was carefully fed on mulberries—a
kind of fruit resembling a water-melon—and, when sufficiently
fat, was crushed in a mill. The paste thus arising was called
papyrus in its primary state, and went through a variety of
processes until it finally became “silk.” Singular to relate, it
was once much admired as an article of female dress! Balloons
were also very generally constructed from it. A better kind of
material, it appears, was subsequently found in the down
surrounding the seed-vessels of a plant vulgarly called
euphorbium, and at that time botanically termed milk-weed. This
latter kind of silk was designated as silk-buckingham, on account
of its superior durability, and was usually prepared for use by
being varnished with a solution of gum caoutchouc—a substance
which in some respects must have resembled the gutta percha now
in common use. This caoutchouc was occasionally called Indian
rubber or rubber of twist, and was no doubt one of the numerous
fungi. Never tell me again that I am not at heart an antiquarian.

Talking of drag-ropes—our own, it seems, has this moment knocked
a man overboard from one of the small magnetic propellers that
swarm in ocean below us—a boat of about six thousand tons, and,
from all accounts, shamefully crowded. These diminutive barques
should be prohibited from carrying more than a definite number of
passengers. The man, of course, was not permitted to get on board
again, and was soon out of sight, he and his life-preserver. I
rejoice, my dear friend, that we live in an age so enlightened
that no such a thing as an individual is supposed to exist. It is
the mass for which the true Humanity cares. By-the-by, talking of
Humanity, do you know that our immortal Wiggins is not so
original in his views of the Social Condition and so forth, as
his contemporaries are inclined to suppose? Pundit assures me
that the same ideas were put nearly in the same way, about a
thousand years ago, by an Irish philosopher called Furrier, on
account of his keeping a retail shop for cat peltries and other
furs. Pundit knows, you know; there can be no mistake about it.
How very wonderfully do we see verified every day, the profound
observation of the Hindoo Aries Tottle (as quoted by
Pundit)—“Thus must we say that, not once or twice, or a few
times, but with almost infinite repetitions, the same opinions
come round in a circle among men.”

April 2.—Spoke to-day the magnetic cutter in charge of the middle
section of floating telegraph wires. I learn that when this
species of telegraph was first put into operation by Horse, it
was considered quite impossible to convey the wires over sea, but
now we are at a loss to comprehend where the difficulty lay! So
wags the world. Tempora mutantur—excuse me for quoting the
Etruscan. What would we do without the Atalantic telegraph?
(Pundit says Atlantic was the ancient adjective.) We lay to a few
minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among
other glorious news, that civil war is raging in Africa, while
the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in Yurope and
Ayesher. Is it not truly remarkable that, before the magnificent
light shed upon philosophy by Humanity, the world was accustomed
to regard War and Pestilence as calamities? Do you know that
prayers were actually offered up in the ancient temples to the
end that these evils (!) might not be visited upon mankind? Is it
not really difficult to comprehend upon what principle of
interest our forefathers acted? Were they so blind as not to
perceive that the destruction of a myriad of individuals is only
so much positive advantage to the mass!

April 3.—It is really a very fine amusement to ascend the
rope-ladder leading to the summit of the balloon-bag, and thence
survey the surrounding world. From the car below you know the
prospect is not so comprehensive—you can see little vertically.
But seated here (where I write this) in the luxuriously-cushioned
open piazza of the summit, one can see everything that is going
on in all directions. Just now there is quite a crowd of balloons
in sight, and they present a very animated appearance, while the
air is resonant with the hum of so many millions of human voices.
I have heard it asserted that when Yellow or (Pundit will have
it) Violet, who is supposed to have been the first aeronaut,
maintained the practicability of traversing the atmosphere in all
directions, by merely ascending or descending until a favorable
current was attained, he was scarcely hearkened to at all by his
contemporaries, who looked upon him as merely an ingenious sort
of madman, because the philosophers (?) of the day declared the
thing impossible. Really now it does seem to me quite
unaccountable how any thing so obviously feasible could have
escaped the sagacity of the ancient savans. But in all ages the
great obstacles to advancement in Art have been opposed by the
so-called men of science. To be sure, our men of science are not
quite so bigoted as those of old:—oh, I have something so queer
to tell you on this topic. Do you know that it is not more than a
thousand years ago since the metaphysicians consented to relieve
the people of the singular fancy that there existed but two
possible roads for the attainment of Truth! Believe it if you
can! It appears that long, long ago, in the night of Time, there
lived a Turkish philosopher (or Hindoo possibly) called Aries
Tottle. This person introduced, or at all events propagated what
was termed the deductive or a priori mode of investigation. He
started with what he maintained to be axioms or “self-evident
truths,” and thence proceeded “logically” to results. His
greatest disciples were one Neuclid, and one Cant. Well, Aries
Tottle flourished supreme until advent of one Hog, surnamed the
“Ettrick Shepherd,” who preached an entirely different system,
which he called the a posteriori or inductive. His plan referred
altogether to Sensation. He proceeded by observing, analyzing,
and classifying facts-instantiae naturae, as they were affectedly
called—into general laws. Aries Tottle’s mode, in a word, was
based on noumena; Hog’s on phenomena. Well, so great was the
admiration excited by this latter system that, at its first
introduction, Aries Tottle fell into disrepute; but finally he
recovered ground and was permitted to divide the realm of Truth
with his more modern rival. The savans now maintained the
Aristotelian and Baconian roads were the sole possible avenues to
knowledge. “Baconian,” you must know, was an adjective invented
as equivalent to Hog-ian and more euphonious and dignified.