“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.  My agony was at length insufferable, and I awoke just in time to perceive that a rat had ran 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.

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, 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.