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 concocter 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.
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