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: