The Best American Humorous Short Stories

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Glancing upward at the clock on the mantelpiece (for I felt too drowsy to take out my
watch), I had the pleasure to find that I had still twenty-five minutes to spare. It was halfpast five; I could easily walk to the insurance office in five minutes; and my usual siestas had never been known to exceed five-and-twenty. I felt sufficiently safe, therefore, and composed myself to my slumbers forthwith.
Having completed them to my satisfaction, I again looked toward the timepiece, and was
half inclined to believe in the possibility of odd accidents when I found that, instead of
my ordinary fifteen or twenty minutes, I had been dozing only three; for it still wanted
seven-and-twenty of the appointed hour. I betook myself again to my nap, and at length a
second time awoke, when, to my utter amazement, it still wanted twenty-seven minutes
of six. I jumped up to examine the clock, and found that it had ceased running. My watch
informed me that it was half-past seven; and, of course, having slept two hours, I was too
late for my appointment. "It will make no difference," I said: "I can call at the office in
the morning and apologize; in the meantime what can be the matter with the clock?"
Upon examining it I discovered that one of the raisin stems which I had been filiping
about the room during the discourse of the Angel of the Odd had flown through the
fractured crystal, and lodging, singularly enough, in the keyhole, with an end projecting
outward, had thus arrested the revolution of the minute hand.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"Ah!" said I, "I see how it is. This thing speaks for itself. A natural accident, such as will
happen now and then!"
I gave the matter no further consideration, and at my usual hour retired to bed. Here,
having placed a candle upon a reading stand at the bed head, and having made an attempt
to peruse some pages of the Omnipresence of the Deity, I unfortunately fell asleep in less than twenty seconds, leaving the light burning as it was.
My dreams were terrifically disturbed by visions of the Angel of the Odd. Methought he
stood at the foot of the couch, drew aside the curtains, and in the hollow, detestable tones
of a rum puncheon, menaced me with the bitterest vengeance for the contempt with
which I had treated him. He concluded a long harangue by taking off his funnel-cap,
inserting the tube into my gullet, and thus deluging me with an ocean of Kirschenwässer,
which he poured in a continuous flood, from one of the long-necked bottles that stood
him instead of an arm.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

My agony was at length insufferable, and I awoke just in time to
perceive that a rat had run off with the lighted candle from the stand, but not in season to
prevent his making his escape with it through the hole, Very soon a strong, suffocating
odor assailed my nostrils; the house, I clearly perceived, was on fire. In a few minutes the
blaze broke forth with violence, and in an incredibly brief period the entire building was
wrapped in flames. All egress from my chamber, except through a window, was cut off.
The crowd, however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder. By means of this I was
descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a huge hog, about whose rotund
stomach, and indeed about whose whole air and physiognomy, there was something
which reminded me of the Angel of the Odd--when this hog, I say, which hitherto had
been quietly slumbering in the mud, took it suddenly into his head that his left shoulder
needed scratching, and could find no more convenient rubbing-post than that afforded by
the foot of the ladder. In an instant I was precipitated, and had the misfortune to fracture
my arm.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

This accident, with the loss of my insurance, and with the more serious loss of my hair,
the whole of which had been singed off by the fire, predisposed me to serious
impressions, so that finally I made up my mind to take a wife. There was a rich widow
disconsolate for the loss of her seventh husband, and to her wounded spirit I offered the
balm of my vows. She yielded a reluctant consent to my prayers. I knelt at her feet in
gratitude and adoration. She blushed and bowed her luxuriant tresses into close contact
with those supplied me temporarily by Grandjean. I know not how the entanglement took
place but so it was. I arose with a shining pate, wigless; she in disdain and wrath, halfburied
in alien hair. Thus ended my hopes of the widow by an accident which could not
have been anticipated, to be sure, but which the natural sequence of events had brought
about.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Without despairing, however, I undertook the siege of a less implacable heart. The fates
were again propitious for a brief period, but again a trivial incident interfered. Meeting
my betrothed in an avenue thronged with the elite of the city, I was hastening to greet her
with one of my best considered bows, when a small particle of some foreign matter
lodging in the corner of my eye rendered me for the moment completely blind. Before I
could recover my sight, the lady of my love had disappeared--irreparably affronted at
what she chose to consider my premeditated rudeness in passing her by ungreeted. While
I stood bewildered at the suddenness of this accident (which might have happened,
nevertheless, to any one under the sun), and while I still continued incapable of sight, I
was accosted by the Angel of the Odd, who proffered me his aid with a civility which I
had no reason to expect. He examined my disordered eye with much gentleness and skill,
informed me that I had a drop in it, and (whatever a "drop" was) took it out, and afforded
me relief.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

I now considered it high time to die (since fortune had so determined to persecute me),
and accordingly made my way to the nearest river. Here, divesting myself of my clothes
(for there is no reason why we cannot die as we were born), I threw myself headlong into
the current; the sole witness of my fate being a solitary crow that had been seduced into
the eating of brandy-saturated corn, and so had staggered away from his fellows. No
sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it into his head to fly away with the
most indispensable portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my
suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and
betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required
and its circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full
speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon the purloiner of my
property, I suddenly perceived that my feet rested no longer upon terra firma; the fact is, I
had thrown myself over a precipice, and should inevitably have been dashed to pieces but
for my good fortune in grasping the end of a long guide-rope, which depended from a
passing balloon.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

As soon as I sufficiently recovered my senses to comprehend the terrific predicament in
which I stood, or rather hung, I exerted all the power of my lungs to make that
predicament known to the aeronaut overhead. But for a long time I exerted myself in
vain. Either the fool could not, or the villain would not perceive me. Meanwhile the
machine rapidly soared, while my strength even more rapidly failed. I was soon upon the
point of resigning myself to my fate, and dropping quietly into the sea, when my spirits
were suddenly revived by hearing a hollow voice from above, which seemed to be lazily
humming an opera air. Looking up, I perceived the Angel of the Odd. He was leaning,
with his arms folded, over the rim of the car; and with a pipe in his mouth, at which he
puffed leisurely, seemed to be upon excellent terms with himself and the universe. I was
too much exhausted to speak, so I merely regarded him with an imploring air.
For several minutes, although he looked me full in the face, he said nothing. At length,
removing carefully his meerschaum from the right to the left corner of his mouth, he
condescended to speak.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"Who pe you," he asked, "und what der teuffel you pe do dare?"
To this piece of impudence, cruelty, and affectation, I could reply only by ejaculating the
monosyllable "Help!"
"Elp!" echoed the ruffian, "not I. Dare iz te pottle--elp yourself, und pe tam'd!"
With these words he let fall a heavy bottle of Kirschenwässer, which, dropping precisely
upon the crown of my head, caused me to imagine that my brains were entirely knocked
out. Impressed with this idea I was about to relinquish my hold and give up the ghost
with a good grace, when I was arrested by the cry of the Angel, who bade me hold on.
"'Old on!" he said: "don't pe in te 'urry--don't. Will you pe take de odder pottle, or 'ave
you pe got zober yet, and come to your zenzes?"
I made haste, hereupon, to nod my head twice--once in the negative, meaning thereby
that I would prefer not taking the other bottle at present; and once in the affirmative,
intending thus to imply that I was sober and had positively come to my senses. By these
means I somewhat softened the Angel.
"Und you pelief, ten," he inquired, "at te last? You pelief, ten, in te possibility of te odd?"
I again nodded my head in assent.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"Und you ave pelief in me, te Angel of te Odd?"
I nodded again.
"Und you acknowledge tat you pe te blind dronk und te vool?"
I nodded once more.
"Put your right hand into your left preeches pocket, ten, in token ov your vull zubmizzion
unto te Angel ov te Odd."
This thing, for very obvious reasons, I found it quite impossible to do. In the first place,
my left arm had been broken in my fall from the ladder, and therefore, had I let go my
hold with the right hand I must have let go altogether. In the second place, I could have
no breeches until I came across the crow. I was therefore obliged, much to my regret, to
shake my head in the negative, intending thus to give the Angel to understand that I
found it inconvenient, just at that moment, to comply with his very reasonable demand!
No sooner, however, had I ceased shaking my head than--
"Go to der teuffel, ten!" roared the Angel of the Odd.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

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 Kirschenwässer. Thus revenged himself the Angel of the Odd.