MELLONTA TAUTA
TO THE EDITORS OF THE LADY'S BOOK:
I have the honor of sending you, for your magazine, an article whichI hope you will be able to comprehend rather more distinctly than Ido myself. It is a translation, by my friend, Martin Van Buren Mavis,(sometimes called the "Poughkeepsie Seer") of an odd-looking MS. which Ifound, about a year ago, tightly corked up in a jug floating in the MareTenebrarum--a sea well described by the Nubian geographer, but seldomvisited now-a-days, except for the transcendentalists and divers forcrotchets.
Truly yours,
EDGAR A. POE
{this paragraph not in the volume--ED}
ON BOARD BALLOON "SKYLARK"
April, 1, 2848
NOW, my dear friend--now, for your sins, you are to suffer theinfliction of a long gossiping letter. I tell you distinctly that I amgoing to punish you for all your impertinences by being as tedious, asdiscursive, as incoherent and as unsatisfactory as possible. Besides,here I am, cooped up in a dirty balloon, with some one or two hundred ofthe canaille, all bound on a pleasure excursion, (what a funny idea somepeople have of pleasure!) and I have no prospect of touching terra firmafor a month at least. Nobody to talk to. Nothing to do. When one hasnothing to do, then is the time to correspond with ones friends. Youperceive, then, why it is that I write you this letter--it is on accountof my ennui and your sins.
Get ready your spectacles and make up your mind to be annoyed. I mean towrite at you every day during this odious voyage.
Heigho! when will any Invention visit the human pericranium? Are weforever to be doomed to the thousand inconveniences of the balloon?Will nobody contrive a more expeditious mode of progress? The jog-trotmovement, to my thinking, is little less than positive torture. Upon myword we have not made more than a hundred miles the hour since leavinghome! The very birds beat us--at least some of them. I assure you thatI do not exaggerate at all. Our motion, no doubt, seems slower than itactually is--this on account of our having no objects about us by whichto estimate our velocity, and on account of our going with the wind. Tobe sure, whenever we meet a balloon we have a chance of perceiving ourrate, and then, I admit, things do not appear so very bad. Accustomed asI am to this mode of travelling, I cannot get over a kind of giddinesswhenever a balloon passes us in a current directly overhead. It alwaysseems to me like an immense bird of prey about to pounce upon us andcarry us off in its claws. One went over us this morning about sunrise,and so nearly overhead that its drag-rope actually brushed the networksuspending our car, and caused us very serious apprehension. Our captainsaid that if the material of the bag had been the trumpery varnished"silk" of five hundred or a thousand years ago, we should inevitablyhave been damaged. This silk, as he explained it to me, was a fabriccomposed of the entrails of a species of earth-worm. The wormwas carefully fed on mulberries--kind of fruit resembling awater-melon--and, when sufficiently fat, was crushed in a mill. Thepaste thus arising was called papyrus in its primary state, and wentthrough a variety of processes until it finally became "silk." Singularto relate, it was once much admired as an article of female dress!Balloons were also very generally constructed from it. A better kind ofmaterial, it appears, was subsequently found in the down surroundingthe seed-vessels of a plant vulgarly called euphorbium, and at that timebotanically termed milk-weed. This latter kind of silk was designated assilk-buckingham, on account of its superior durability, and was usuallyprepared for use by being varnished with a solution of gum caoutchouc--asubstance which in some respects must have resembled the gutta perchanow in common use. This caoutchouc was occasionally called Indian rubberor rubber of twist, and was no doubt one of the numerous fungi. Nevertell me again that I am not at heart an antiquarian.
Talking of drag-ropes--our own, it seems, has this moment knocked a manoverboard from one of the small magnetic propellers that swarm in oceanbelow us--a boat of about six thousand tons, and, from all accounts,shamefully crowded. These diminutive barques should be prohibited fromcarrying more than a definite number of passengers. The man, of course,was not permitted to get on board again, and was soon out of sight, heand his life-preserver. I rejoice, my dear friend, that we live in anage so enlightened that no such a thing as an individual is supposedto exist. It is the mass for which the true Humanity cares. By-the-by,talking of Humanity, do you know that our immortal Wiggins is not sooriginal in his views of the Social Condition and so forth, as hiscontemporaries are inclined to suppose? Pundit assures me that the sameideas were put nearly in the same way, about a thousand years ago, byan Irish philosopher called Furrier, on account of his keeping a retailshop for cat peltries and other furs. Pundit knows, you know; there canbe no mistake about it. How very wonderfully do we see verified everyday, the profound observation of the Hindoo Aries Tottle (as quoted byPundit)--"Thus must we say that, not once or twice, or a few times,but with almost infinite repetitions, the same opinions come round in acircle among men."
April 2.--Spoke to-day the magnetic cutter in charge of the middlesection of floating telegraph wires. I learn that when this species oftelegraph was first put into operation by Horse, it was considered quiteimpossible to convey the wires over sea, but now we are at a lossto comprehend where the difficulty lay! So wags the world. Temporamutantur--excuse me for quoting the Etruscan. What would we dowithout the Atalantic telegraph? (Pundit says Atlantic was the ancientadjective.) We lay to a few minutes to ask the cutter some questions,and learned, among other glorious news, that civil war is raging inAfrica, while the plague is doing its good work beautifully bothin Yurope and Ayesher. Is it not truly remarkable that, before themagnificent light shed upon philosophy by Humanity, the world wasaccustomed to regard War and Pestilence as calamities? Do you know thatprayers were actually offered up in the ancient temples to the end thatthese evils (!) might not be visited upon mankind? Is it not reallydifficult to comprehend upon what principle of interest our forefathersacted? Were they so blind as not to perceive that the destruction of amyriad of individuals is only so much positive advantage to the mass!
April 3.--It is really a very fine amusement to ascend the rope-ladderleading to the summit of the balloon-bag, and thence survey thesurrounding world. From the car below you know the prospect is not socomprehensive--you can see little vertically. But seated here (where Iwrite this) in the luxuriously-cushioned open piazza of the summit, onecan see everything that is going on in all directions. Just now thereis quite a crowd of balloons in sight, and they present a very animatedappearance, while the air is resonant with the hum of so many millionsof human voices. I have heard it asserted that when Yellow or (Punditwill have it) Violet, who is supposed to have been the first aeronaut,maintained the practicability of traversing the atmosphere in alldirections, by merely ascending or descending until a favorable currentwas attained, he was scarcely hearkened to at all by his contemporaries,who looked upon him as merely an ingenious sort of madman, because thephilosophers (?) of the day declared the thing impossible. Really now itdoes seem to me quite unaccountable how any thing so obviously feasiblecould have escaped the sagacity of the ancient savans. But in all agesthe great obstacles to advancement in Art have been opposed by theso-called men of science. To be sure, our men of science are not quiteso bigoted as those of old:--oh, I have something so queer to tell youon this topic. Do you know that it is not more than a thousand years agosince the metaphysicians consented to relieve the people of the singularfancy that there existed but two possible roads for the attainment ofTruth! Believe it if you can! It appears that long, long ago, in thenight of Time, there lived a Turkish philosopher (or Hindoo possibly)called Aries Tottle. This person introduced, or at all events propagatedwhat was termed the deductive or a priori mode of investigation. Hestarted with what he maintained to be axioms or "self-evident truths,"and thence proceeded "logically" to results. His greatest disciples wereone Neuclid, and one Cant. Well, Aries Tottle flourished supreme untiladvent of one Hog, surnamed the "Ettrick Shepherd," who preachedan entirely different system, which he call
ed the a posteriori orinductive. His plan referred altogether to Sensation. He proceeded byobserving, analyzing, and classifying facts-instantiae naturae, as theywere affectedly called--into general laws. Aries Tottle's mode, in aword, was based on noumena; Hog's on phenomena. Well, so great wasthe admiration excited by this latter system that, at its firstintroduction, Aries Tottle fell into disrepute; but finally he recoveredground and was permitted to divide the realm of Truth with his moremodern rival. The savans now maintained the Aristotelian and Baconianroads were the sole possible avenues to knowledge. "Baconian," youmust know, was an adjective invented as equivalent to Hog-ian and moreeuphonious and dignified.
Now, my dear friend, I do assure you, most positively, that I representthis matter fairly, on the soundest authority and you can easilyunderstand how a notion so absurd on its very face must have operatedto retard the progress of all true knowledge--which makes its advancesalmost invariably by intuitive bounds. The ancient idea confinedinvestigations to crawling; and for hundreds of years so great was theinfatuation about Hog especially, that a virtual end was put to allthinking, properly so called. No man dared utter a truth to which hefelt himself indebted to his Soul alone. It mattered not whether thetruth was even demonstrably a truth, for the bullet-headed savans of thetime regarded only the road by which he had attained it. They would noteven look at the end. "Let us see the means," they cried, "the means!"If, upon investigation of the means, it was found to come under neitherthe category Aries (that is to say Ram) nor under the category Hog, whythen the savans went no farther, but pronounced the "theorist" a fool,and would have nothing to do with him or his truth.
Now, it cannot be maintained, even, that by the crawling system thegreatest amount of truth would be attained in any long series of ages,for the repression of imagination was an evil not to be compensated forby any superior certainty in the ancient modes of investigation.The error of these Jurmains, these Vrinch, these Inglitch, and theseAmriccans (the latter, by the way, were our own immediate progenitors),was an error quite analogous with that of the wiseacre who fancies thathe must necessarily see an object the better the more closely he holdsit to his eyes. These people blinded themselves by details. When theyproceeded Hoggishly, their "facts" were by no means always facts--amatter of little consequence had it not been for assuming that theywere facts and must be facts because they appeared to be such. When theyproceeded on the path of the Ram, their course was scarcely as straightas a ram's horn, for they never had an axiom which was an axiom at all.They must have been very blind not to see this, even in their own day;for even in their own day many of the long "established" axioms had beenrejected. For example--"Ex nihilo nihil fit"; "a body cannot act whereit is not"; "there cannot exist antipodes"; "darkness cannot come outof light"--all these, and a dozen other similar propositions, formerlyadmitted without hesitation as axioms, were, even at the period of whichI speak, seen to be untenable. How absurd in these people, then, topersist in putting faith in "axioms" as immutable bases of Truth!But even out of the mouths of their soundest reasoners it is easy todemonstrate the futility, the impalpability of their axioms in general.Who was the soundest of their logicians? Let me see! I will go and askPundit and be back in a minute.... Ah, here we have it! Here is a bookwritten nearly a thousand years ago and lately translated from theInglitch--which, by the way, appears to have been the rudiment of theAmriccan. Pundit says it is decidedly the cleverest ancient work on itstopic, Logic. The author (who was much thought of in his day) was oneMiller, or Mill; and we find it recorded of him, as a point of someimportance, that he had a mill-horse called Bentham. But let us glanceat the treatise!
Ah!--"Ability or inability to conceive," says Mr. Mill, very properly,"is in no case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth." Whatmodern in his senses would ever think of disputing this truism? Theonly wonder with us must be, how it happened that Mr. Mill conceived itnecessary even to hint at any thing so obvious. So far good--but letus turn over another paper. What have we here?--"Contradictories cannotboth be true--that is, cannot co-exist in nature." Here Mr. Mill means,for example, that a tree must be either a tree or not a tree--that itcannot be at the same time a tree and not a tree. Very well; but I askhim why. His reply is this--and never pretends to be any thing else thanthis--"Because it is impossible to conceive that contradictories canboth be true." But this is no answer at all, by his own showing, for hashe not just admitted as a truism that "ability or inability to conceiveis in no case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth."
Now I do not complain of these ancients so much because their logicis, by their own showing, utterly baseless, worthless and fantasticaltogether, as because of their pompous and imbecile proscription of allother roads of Truth, of all other means for its attainment than thetwo preposterous paths--the one of creeping and the one of crawling--towhich they have dared to confine the Soul that loves nothing so well asto soar.
By the by, my dear friend, do you not think it would have puzzled theseancient dogmaticians to have determined by which of their two roads itwas that the most important and most sublime of all their truths was,in effect, attained? I mean the truth of Gravitation. Newton owed it toKepler. Kepler admitted that his three laws were guessed at--thesethree laws of all laws which led the great Inglitch mathematician to hisprinciple, the basis of all physical principle--to go behind which wemust enter the Kingdom of Metaphysics. Kepler guessed--that is to sayimagined. He was essentially a "theorist"--that word now of so muchsanctity, formerly an epithet of contempt. Would it not have puzzledthese old moles too, to have explained by which of the two "roads" acryptographist unriddles a cryptograph of more than usual secrecy, orby which of the two roads Champollion directed mankind to those enduringand almost innumerable truths which resulted from his deciphering theHieroglyphics.
One word more on this topic and I will be done boring you. Is it notpassing strange that, with their eternal prattling about roads to Truth,these bigoted people missed what we now so clearly perceive to be thegreat highway--that of Consistency? Does it not seem singular how theyshould have failed to deduce from the works of God the vital fact thata perfect consistency must be an absolute truth! How plain has been ourprogress since the late announcement of this proposition! Investigationhas been taken out of the hands of the ground-moles and given, as atask, to the true and only true thinkers, the men of ardent imagination.These latter theorize. Can you not fancy the shout of scorn with whichmy words would be received by our progenitors were it possible for themto be now looking over my shoulder? These men, I say, theorize; andtheir theories are simply corrected, reduced, systematized--cleared,little by little, of their dross of inconsistency--until, finally, aperfect consistency stands apparent which even the most stolid admit,because it is a consistency, to be an absolute and an unquestionabletruth.
April 4.--The new gas is doing wonders, in conjunction with the newimprovement with gutta percha. How very safe, commodious, manageable,and in every respect convenient are our modern balloons! Here is animmense one approaching us at the rate of at least a hundred and fiftymiles an hour. It seems to be crowded with people--perhaps there arethree or four hundred passengers--and yet it soars to an elevation ofnearly a mile, looking down upon poor us with sovereign contempt. Stilla hundred or even two hundred miles an hour is slow travelling afterall. Do you remember our flight on the railroad across the Kanadawcontinent?--fully three hundred miles the hour--that was travelling.Nothing to be seen though--nothing to be done but flirt, feast and dancein the magnificent saloons. Do you remember what an odd sensation wasexperienced when, by chance, we caught a glimpse of external objectswhile the cars were in full flight? Every thing seemed unique--in onemass. For my part, I cannot say but that I preferred the travelling bythe slow train of a hundred miles the hour. Here we were permittedto have glass windows--even to have them open--and something like adistinct view of the country was attainable.... Pundit says that theroute for the great Kanadaw railroad must have been in some measuremarked out about
nine hundred years ago! In fact, he goes so far asto assert that actual traces of a road are still discernible--tracesreferable to a period quite as remote as that mentioned. The track, itappears was double only; ours, you know, has twelve paths; and three orfour new ones are in preparation. The ancient rails were very slight,and placed so close together as to be, according to modern notions,quite frivolous, if not dangerous in the extreme. The present width oftrack--fifty feet--is considered, indeed, scarcely secure enough. Formy part, I make no doubt that a track of some sort must have existed invery remote times, as Pundit asserts; for nothing can be clearer, tomy mind, than that, at some period--not less than seven centuries ago,certainly--the Northern and Southern Kanadaw continents were united;the Kanawdians, then, would have been driven, by necessity, to a greatrailroad across the continent.
April 5.--I am almost devoured by ennui. Pundit is the only conversibleperson on board; and he, poor soul! can speak of nothing butantiquities. He has been occupied all the day in the attempt to convinceme that the ancient Amriccans governed themselves!--did everanybody hear of such an absurdity?--that they existed in a sort ofevery-man-for-himself confederacy, after the fashion of the "prairiedogs" that we read of in fable. He says that they started withthe queerest idea conceivable, viz: that all men are born free andequal--this in the very teeth of the laws of gradation so visiblyimpressed upon all things both in the moral and physical universe.Every man "voted," as they called it--that is to say meddled with publicaffairs--until at length, it was discovered that what is everybody'sbusiness is nobody's, and that the "Republic" (so the absurd thing wascalled) was without a government at all. It is related, however,that the first circumstance which disturbed, very particularly, theself-complacency of the philosophers who constructed this "Republic,"was the startling discovery that universal suffrage gave opportunity forfraudulent schemes, by means of which any desired number of votes mightat any time be polled, without the possibility of prevention or evendetection, by any party which should be merely villainous enough notto be ashamed of the fraud. A little reflection upon this discoverysufficed to render evident the consequences, which were that rascalitymust predominate--in a word, that a republican government could neverbe any thing but a rascally one. While the philosophers, however, werebusied in blushing at their stupidity in not having foreseen theseinevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new theories, thematter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of the name of Mob,who took every thing into his own hands and set up a despotism, incomparison with which those of the fabulous Zeros and Hellofagabaluseswere respectable and delectable. This Mob (a foreigner, by-the-by), issaid to have been the most odious of all men that ever encumbered theearth. He was a giant in stature--insolent, rapacious, filthy, had thegall of a bullock with the heart of a hyena and the brains of a peacock.He died, at length, by dint of his own energies, which exhausted him.Nevertheless, he had his uses, as every thing has, however vile,and taught mankind a lesson which to this day it is in no danger offorgetting--never to run directly contrary to the natural analogies. Asfor Republicanism, no analogy could be found for it upon the face ofthe earth--unless we except the case of the "prairie dogs," an exceptionwhich seems to demonstrate, if anything, that democracy is a veryadmirable form of government--for dogs.
April 6.--Last night had a fine view of Alpha Lyrae, whose disk, throughour captain's spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a degree, lookingvery much as our sun does to the naked eye on a misty day. Alpha Lyrae,although so very much larger than our sun, by the by, resembleshim closely as regards its spots, its atmosphere, and in many otherparticulars. It is only within the last century, Pundit tells me, thatthe binary relation existing between these two orbs began even to besuspected. The evident motion of our system in the heavens was (strangeto say!) referred to an orbit about a prodigious star in the centre ofthe galaxy. About this star, or at all events about a centre of gravitycommon to all the globes of the Milky Way and supposed to be nearAlcyone in the Pleiades, every one of these globes was declared to berevolving, our own performing the circuit in a period of 117,000,000 ofyears! We, with our present lights, our vast telescopic improvements,and so forth, of course find it difficult to comprehend the ground of anidea such as this. Its first propagator was one Mudler. He was led,we must presume, to this wild hypothesis by mere analogy in the firstinstance; but, this being the case, he should have at least adhered toanalogy in its development. A great central orb was, in fact, suggested;so far Mudler was consistent. This central orb, however, dynamically,should have been greater than all its surrounding orbs taken together.The question might then have been asked--"Why do we not see it?"--we,especially, who occupy the mid region of the cluster--the very localitynear which, at least, must be situated this inconceivable central sun.The astronomer, perhaps, at this point, took refuge in the suggestionof non-luminosity; and here analogy was suddenly let fall. But evenadmitting the central orb non-luminous, how did he manage to explain itsfailure to be rendered visible by the incalculable host of glorious sunsglaring in all directions about it? No doubt what he finally maintainedwas merely a centre of gravity common to all the revolving orbs--buthere again analogy must have been let fall. Our system revolves, it istrue, about a common centre of gravity, but it does this in connectionwith and in consequence of a material sun whose mass more thancounterbalances the rest of the system. The mathematical circle is acurve composed of an infinity of straight lines; but this idea of thecircle--this idea of it which, in regard to all earthly geometry, weconsider as merely the mathematical, in contradistinction from thepractical, idea--is, in sober fact, the practical conception which alonewe have any right to entertain in respect to those Titanic circles withwhich we have to deal, at least in fancy, when we suppose our system,with its fellows, revolving about a point in the centre of the galaxy.Let the most vigorous of human imaginations but attempt to take a singlestep toward the comprehension of a circuit so unutterable! I wouldscarcely be paradoxical to say that a flash of lightning itself,travelling forever upon the circumference of this inconceivable circle,would still forever be travelling in a straight line. That the path ofour sun along such a circumference--that the direction of our system insuch an orbit--would, to any human perception, deviate in the slightestdegree from a straight line even in a million of years, is a propositionnot to be entertained; and yet these ancient astronomers were absolutelycajoled, it appears, into believing that a decisive curvature had becomeapparent during the brief period of their astronomical history--duringthe mere point--during the utter nothingness of two or three thousandyears! How incomprehensible, that considerations such as this did notat once indicate to them the true state of affairs--that of the binaryrevolution of our sun and Alpha Lyrae around a common centre of gravity!
April 7.--Continued last night our astronomical amusements. Had a fineview of the five Neptunian asteroids, and watched with much interest theputting up of a huge impost on a couple of lintels in the new templeat Daphnis in the moon. It was amusing to think that creatures sodiminutive as the lunarians, and bearing so little resemblance tohumanity, yet evinced a mechanical ingenuity so much superior to ourown. One finds it difficult, too, to conceive the vast masses whichthese people handle so easily, to be as light as our own reason tells usthey actually are.
April 8.--Eureka! Pundit is in his glory. A balloon from Kanadaw spokeus to-day and threw on board several late papers; they contain someexceedingly curious information relative to Kanawdian or rather Amriccanantiquities. You know, I presume, that laborers have for some monthsbeen employed in preparing the ground for a new fountain at Paradise,the Emperor's principal pleasure garden. Paradise, it appears, has been,literally speaking, an island time out of mind--that is to say, itsnorthern boundary was always (as far back as any record extends) arivulet, or rather a very narrow arm of the sea. This arm was graduallywidened until it attained its present breadth--a mile. The whole lengthof the island is nine miles; the breadth varies materially. The entirearea (so Pundit says) was, about eight
hundred years ago, densely packedwith houses, some of them twenty stories high; land (for some mostunaccountable reason) being considered as especially precious just inthis vicinity. The disastrous earthquake, however, of the year 2050, sototally uprooted and overwhelmed the town (for it was almost too largeto be called a village) that the most indefatigable of our antiquarianshave never yet been able to obtain from the site any sufficient data (inthe shape of coins, medals or inscriptions) wherewith to build up eventhe ghost of a theory concerning the manners, customs, &c., &c., &c.,of the aboriginal inhabitants. Nearly all that we have hitherto known ofthem is, that they were a portion of the Knickerbocker tribe of savagesinfesting the continent at its first discovery by Recorder Riker, aknight of the Golden Fleece. They were by no means uncivilized, however,but cultivated various arts and even sciences after a fashion of theirown. It is related of them that they were acute in many respects, butwere oddly afflicted with monomania for building what, in the ancientAmriccan, was denominated "churches"--a kind of pagoda instituted forthe worship of two idols that went by the names of Wealth and Fashion.In the end, it is said, the island became, nine tenths of it,church. The women, too, it appears, were oddly deformed by a naturalprotuberance of the region just below the small of the back--although,most unaccountably, this deformity was looked upon altogether in thelight of a beauty. One or two pictures of these singular women havein fact, been miraculously preserved. They look very odd, very--likesomething between a turkey-cock and a dromedary.
Well, these few details are nearly all that have descended to usrespecting the ancient Knickerbockers. It seems, however, that whiledigging in the centre of the emperors garden, (which, you know, coversthe whole island), some of the workmen unearthed a cubical and evidentlychiseled block of granite, weighing several hundred pounds. It was ingood preservation, having received, apparently, little injury from theconvulsion which entombed it. On one of its surfaces was a marble slabwith (only think of it!) an inscription--a legible inscription. Punditis in ecstacies. Upon detaching the slab, a cavity appeared, containinga leaden box filled with various coins, a long scroll of names, severaldocuments which appear to resemble newspapers, with other matters ofintense interest to the antiquarian! There can be no doubt thatall these are genuine Amriccan relics belonging to the tribe calledKnickerbocker. The papers thrown on board our balloon are filled withfac-similes of the coins, MSS., typography, &c., &c. I copy for youramusement the Knickerbocker inscription on the marble slab:--
This Corner Stone of a Monument to
The Memory of
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Was Laid With Appropriate Ceremonies
on the
19th Day of October, 1847
The anniversary of the surrender of
Lord Cornwallis
to General Washington at Yorktown
A. D. 1781
Under the Auspices of the
Washington Monument Association of
the city of New York
This, as I give it, is a verbatim translation done by Pundit himself, sothere can be no mistake about it. From the few words thus preserved, weglean several important items of knowledge, not the least interesting ofwhich is the fact that a thousand years ago actual monuments had falleninto disuse--as was all very proper--the people contenting themselves,as we do now, with a mere indication of the design to erect a monumentat some future time; a corner-stone being cautiously laid by itself"solitary and alone" (excuse me for quoting the great American poetBenton!), as a guarantee of the magnanimous intention. We ascertain,too, very distinctly, from this admirable inscription, the how as wellas the where and the what, of the great surrender in question. As to thewhere, it was Yorktown (wherever that was), and as to the what, itwas General Cornwallis (no doubt some wealthy dealer in corn). He wassurrendered. The inscription commemorates the surrender of--what? why,"of Lord Cornwallis." The only question is what could the savageswish him surrendered for. But when we remember that these savages wereundoubtedly cannibals, we are led to the conclusion that they intendedhim for sausage. As to the how of the surrender, no language can bemore explicit. Lord Cornwallis was surrendered (for sausage) "under theauspices of the Washington Monument Association"--no doubt a charitableinstitution for the depositing of corner-stones.--But, Heaven bless me!what is the matter? Ah, I see--the balloon has collapsed, and we shallhave a tumble into the sea. I have, therefore, only time enough to addthat, from a hasty inspection of the fac-similes of newspapers, &c.,&c., I find that the great men in those days among the Amriccans, wereone John, a smith, and one Zacchary, a tailor.
Good-bye, until I see you again. Whether you ever get this letter ornot is point of little importance, as I write altogether for my ownamusement. I shall cork the MS. up in a bottle, however, and throw itinto the sea.
Yours everlastingly,
PUNDITA.
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4 Page 11
