rayers. 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, half buried 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.

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.

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 its 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
a