Accidents III
“These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities — of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect ('like mine,' I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) 'to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it.”
-Edgar Allan Poe,
"The Angel Of The Odd: An Extravaganza"