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 groveled 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 glasses and shattered
bottles, and an empty jug of the Schiedam Kirschenwaesser. Thus
revenged himself the Angel of the Odd.
THE SCHOOLMASTER'S PROGRESS
By Caroline M.S. Kirkland (1801-1864)
[From _The Gift_ for 1845, published late in 1844. Republished in the
volume, _Western Clearings_ (1845), by Caroline M.S. Kirkland.]
Master William Horner came to our village to school when he was about
eighteen years old: tall, lank, straight-sided, and straight-haired,
with a mouth of the most puckered and solemn kind.
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