THE ANGEL OF THE ODD
[From _The Columbian Magazine_, October, 1844.]
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)
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_, Tuckerman'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 frequent
aid of 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 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.
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