“Put your right hand into your left hand 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.
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
grovelled 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 glass and shattered bottles, and an empty
jug of the Schiedam Kirschenwasser. Thus revenged himself the
Angel of the Odd.
[Mabbott states that Griswold “obviously had a revised form” for
use in the 1856 volume of Poe’s works. Mabbott does not
substantiate this claim, but it is surely not unreasonable. An
editor, and even typographical errors, may have produced nearly
all of the very minor changes made in this version. (Indeed, two
very necessary words were clearly dropped by accident.) An editor
might have corrected “Wickliffe’s ‘Epigoniad’” to “Wilkie’s
‘Epigoniad’,” but is unlikely to have added “Tuckerman’s
‘Sicily’” to the list of books read by the narrator. Griswold was
not above forgery (in Poe’s letters) when it suited his purpose,
but would have too little to gain by such an effort in this
instance.]