"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