Chapter 25 (9)

Hereupon I bethought me of looking immediately before my nose,
and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a
personage nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His
body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that
character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether
extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the
purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper portion
of the carcass two tolerably long bottles, with the necks outward
for hands. All the head that I saw the monster possessed of was
one of those Hessian canteens which resemble a large snuff-box
with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen (with a funnel
on its top, like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set
on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and
through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a
very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling
and grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible
talk.

“I zay,” said he, “you mos pe dronk as de pig, vor zit dare and
not zee me zit ere; and I zay, doo, you mos pe pigger vool as de
goose, vor to dispelief vat iz print in de print. ’Tiz de
troof—dat it iz—eberry vord ob it.”

“Who are you, pray?” said I, with much dignity, although somewhat
puzzled; “how did you get here? and what is it you are talking
about?”

“Az vor ow I com’d ere,” replied the figure, “dat iz none of your
pizzness; and as vor vat I be talking apout, I be talk apout vat
I tink proper; and as vor who I be, vy dat is de very ting I
com’d here for to let you zee for yourzelf.”

“You are a drunken vagabond,” said I, “and I shall ring the bell
and order my footman to kick you into the street.”

“He! he! he!” said the fellow, “hu! hu! hu! dat you can’t do.”

“Can’t do!” said I, “what do you mean?—I can’t do what?”

“Ring de pell,” he replied, attempting a grin with his little
villanous mouth.

Upon this I made an effort to get up, in order to put my threat
into execution; but the ruffian just reached across the table
very deliberately, and hitting me a tap on the forehead with the
neck of one of the long bottles, knocked me back into the
arm-chair from which I had half arisen. I was utterly astounded;
and, for a moment, was quite at a loss what to do. In the
meantime, he continued his talk.

“You zee,” said he, “it iz te bess vor zit still; and now you
shall know who I pe. Look at me! zee! I am te _Angel ov te Odd_.”

“And odd enough, too,” I ventured to reply; “but I was always
under the impression that an angel had wings.”

“Te wing!” he cried, highly incensed, “vat I pe do mit te wing?
Mein Gott! do you take me vor a shicken?”

“No—oh no!” I replied, much alarmed, “you are no
chicken—certainly not.”

“Well, den, zit still and pehabe yourself, or I’ll rap you again
mid me vist. It iz te shicken ab te wing, und te owl ab te wing,
und te imp ab te wing, und te head-teuffel ab te wing. Te angel
ab _not_ te wing, and I am te _Angel ov te Odd_.”

“And your business with me at present is—is—”

“My pizzness!” ejaculated the thing, “vy vat a low bred buppy you
mos pe vor to ask a gentleman und an angel apout his pizziness!”

This language was rather more than I could bear, even from an
angel; so, plucking up courage, I seized a salt-cellar which lay
within reach, and hurled it at the head of the intruder. Either
he dodged, however, or my aim was inaccurate; for all I
accomplished was the demolition of the crystal which protected
the dial of the clock upon the mantel-piece. As for the Angel, he
evinced his sense of my assault by giving me two or three hard
consecutive raps upon the forehead as before. These reduced me at
once to submission, and I am almost ashamed to confess that
either through pain or vexation, there came a few tears into my
eyes.

“Mein Gott!” said the Angel of the Odd, apparently much softened
at my distress; “mein Gott, te man is eder ferry dronk or ferry
zorry. You mos not trink it so strong—you mos put te water in te
wine. Here, trink dis, like a goot veller, und don’t gry
now—don’t!”

Hereupon the Angel of the Odd replenished my goblet (which was
about a third full of Port) with a colorless fluid that he poured
from one of his hand bottles. I observed that these bottles had
labels about their necks, and that these labels were inscribed
“Kirschenwasser.”

The considerate kindness of the Angel mollified me in no little
measure; and, aided by the water with which he diluted my Port
more than once, I at length regained sufficient temper to listen
to his very extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount
all that he told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was
the genius who presided over the _contretemps_ of mankind, and
whose business it was to bring about the _odd accidents_ which
are continually astonishing the skeptic. Once or twice, upon my
venturing to express my total incredulity in respect to his
pretensions, he grew very angry indeed, so that at length I
considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at all, and let him
have his own way. He talked on, therefore, at great length, while
I merely leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, and amused
myself with munching raisins and filliping the stems about the
room. But, by and by, the Angel suddenly construed this behavior
of mine into contempt. He arose in a terrible passion, slouched
his funnel down over his eyes, swore a vast oath, uttered a
threat of some character which I did not precisely comprehend,
and finally made me a low bow and departed, wishing me, in the
language of the archbishop in Gil-Blas, “_beaucoup de bonheur et
un peu plus de bon sens_.”

His departure afforded me relief. The _very_ few glasses of
Lafitte that I had sipped had the effect of rendering me drowsy,
and I felt inclined to take a nap of some fifteen or twenty
minutes, as is my custom after dinner. At six I had an
appointment of consequence, which it was quite indispensable that
I should keep. The policy of insurance for my dwelling house had
expired the day before; and, some dispute having arisen, it was
agreed that, at six, I should meet the board of directors of the
company and settle the terms of a renewal. Glancing upward at the
clock on the mantel-piece, (for I felt too drowsy to take out my
watch), I had the pleasure to find that I had still twenty-five
minutes to spare. It was half past five; I could easily walk to
the insurance office in five minutes; and my usual siestas had
never been known to exceed five and twenty. I felt sufficiently
safe, therefore, and composed myself to my slumbers forthwith.

Having completed them to my satisfaction, I again looked toward
the time-piece and was half inclined to believe in the
possibility of odd accidents when I found that, instead of my
ordinary fifteen or twenty minutes, I had been dozing only three;
for it still wanted seven and twenty of the appointed hour. I
betook myself again to my nap, and at length a second time awoke,
when, to my utter amazement, it _still_ wanted twenty-seven
minutes of six. I jumped up to examine the clock, and found that
it had ceased running. My watch informed me that it was half past
seven; and, of course, having slept two hours, I was too late for
my appointment. “It will make no difference,” I said: “I can call
at the office in the morning and apologize; in the meantime what
can be the matter with the clock?” Upon examining it I discovered
that one of the raisin stems which I had been filliping about the
room during the discourse of the Angel of the Odd, had flown
through the fractured crystal, and lodging, singularly enough, in
the key-hole, with an end projecting outward, had thus arrested
the revolution of the minute hand.

“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.

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 _élite_ 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 atmosphere, and intent only upon
the purloiner of my property, I suddenly perceived that my feet
rested no longer upon _terra-firma_; the fact is, I had thrown
myself over a precipice, and should inevitably have been dashed
to pieces but for my good fortune in grasping the end of a long
guide-rope, which depended from a passing balloon.

As soon as I sufficiently recovered my senses to comprehend the
terrific predicament in which I stood or rather hung, I exerted
all the power of my lungs to make that predicament known to the
æronaut overhead. But for a long time I exerted myself in vain.
Either the fool could not, or the villain would not perceive me.
Meantime the machine rapidly soared, while my strength even more
rapidly failed. I was soon upon the point of resigning myself to
my fate, and dropping quietly into the sea, when my spirits were
suddenly revived by hearing a hollow voice from above, which
seemed to be lazily humming an opera air. Looking up, I perceived
the Angel of the Odd. He was leaning with his arms folded, over
the rim of the car; and with a pipe in his mouth, at which he
puffed leisurely, seemed to be upon excellent terms with himself
and the universe. I was too much exhausted to speak, so I merely
regarded him with an imploring air.

For several minutes, although he looked me full in the face, he
said nothing. At length removing carefully his meerschaum from
the right to the left corner of his mouth, he condescended to
speak.

“Who pe you,” he asked, “und what der teuffel you pe do dare?”

To this piece of impudence, cruelty and affectation, I could
reply only by ejaculating the monosyllable “Help!”

“Elp!” echoed the ruffian—“not I. Dare iz te pottle—elp yourself,
und pe tam’d!”

With these words he let fall a heavy bottle of Kirschenwasser
which, dropping precisely upon the crown of my head, caused me to
imagine that my brains were entirely knocked out. Impressed with
this idea, I was about to relinquish my hold and give up the
ghost with a good grace, when I was arrested by the cry of the
Angel, who bade me hold on.

“Old on!” he said; “don’t pe in te urry—don’t. Will you pe take
de odder pottle, or ave you pe got zober yet and come to your
zenzes?”

I made haste, hereupon, to nod my head twice—once in the
negative, meaning thereby that I would prefer not taking the
other bottle at present—and once in the affirmative, intending
thus to imply that I _was_ sober and _had_ positively come to my
senses. By these means I somewhat softened the Angel.

“Und you pelief, ten,” he inquired, “at te last? You pelief, ten,
in te possibilty of te odd?”

I again nodded my head in assent.

“Und you ave pelief in _me_, te Angel of te Odd?”

I nodded again.

“Und you acknowledge tat you pe te blind dronk and te vool?”

I nodded once more.

“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.]

MELLONTA TAUTA

TO THE EDITORS OF THE LADY’S BOOK:

I have the honor of sending you, for your magazine, an article
which I hope you will be able to comprehend rather more
distinctly than I do myself. It is a translation, by my friend,
Martin Van Buren Mavis, (sometimes called the “Poughkeepsie
Seer”) of an odd-looking MS. which I found, about a year ago,
tightly corked up in a jug floating in the Mare Tenebrarum—a sea
well described by the Nubian geographer, but seldom visited
now-a-days, except for the transcendentalists and divers for
crotchets.

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 the
infliction of a long gossiping letter. I tell you distinctly that
I am going to punish you for all your impertinences by being as
tedious, as discursive, as incoherent and as unsatisfactory as
possible. Besides, here I am, cooped up in a dirty balloon, with
some one or two hundred of the canaille, all bound on a pleasure
excursion, (what a funny idea some people have of pleasure!) and
I have no prospect of touching terra firma for a month at least.
Nobody to talk to. Nothing to do. When one has nothing to do,
then is the time to correspond with ones friends. You perceive,
then, why it is that I write you this letter—it is on account of
my ennui and your sins.

Get ready your spectacles and make up your mind to be annoyed. I
mean to write at you every day during this odious voyage.

Heigho! when will any Invention visit the human pericranium? Are
we forever to be doomed to the thousand inconveniences of the
balloon? Will nobody contrive a more expeditious mode of
progress? The jog-trot movement, to my thinking, is little less
than positive torture. Upon my word we have not made more than a
hundred miles the hour since leaving home! The very birds beat
us—at least some of them. I assure you that I do not exaggerate
at all. Our motion, no doubt, seems slower than it actually
is—this on account of our having no objects about us by which to
estimate our velocity, and on account of our going with the wind.
To be sure, whenever we meet a balloon we have a chance of
perceiving our rate, and then, I admit, things do not appear so
very bad. Accustomed as I am to this mode of travelling, I cannot
get over a kind of giddiness whenever a balloon passes us in a
current directly overhead. It always seems to me like an immense
bird of prey about to pounce upon us and carry us off in its
claws. One went over us this morning about sunrise, and so nearly
overhead that its drag-rope actually brushed the network
suspending our car, and caused us very serious apprehension. Our
captain said that if the material of the bag had been the
trumpery varnished “silk” of five hundred or a thousand years
ago, we should inevitably have been damaged. This silk, as he
explained it to me, was a fabric composed of the entrails of a
species of earth-worm. The worm was carefully fed on mulberries—a
kind of fruit resembling a water-melon—and, when sufficiently
fat, was crushed in a mill. The paste thus arising was called
papyrus in its primary state, and went through a variety of
processes until it finally became “silk.” Singular to relate, it
was once much admired as an article of female dress! Balloons
were also very generally constructed from it. A better kind of
material, it appears, was subsequently found in the down
surrounding the seed-vessels of a plant vulgarly called
euphorbium, and at that time botanically termed milk-weed. This
latter kind of silk was designated as silk-buckingham, on account
of its superior durability, and was usually prepared for use by
being varnished with a solution of gum caoutchouc—a substance
which in some respects must have resembled the gutta percha now
in common use. This caoutchouc was occasionally called Indian
rubber or rubber of twist, and was no doubt one of the numerous
fungi. Never tell me again that I am not at heart an antiquarian.

Talking of drag-ropes—our own, it seems, has this moment knocked
a man overboard from one of the small magnetic propellers that
swarm in ocean below us—a boat of about six thousand tons, and,
from all accounts, shamefully crowded. These diminutive barques
should be prohibited from carrying 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, he and his life-preserver. I
rejoice, my dear friend, that we live in an age so enlightened
that no such a thing as an individual is supposed to 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 so
original in his views of the Social Condition and so forth, as
his contemporaries are inclined to suppose? Pundit assures me
that the same ideas were put nearly in the same way, about a
thousand years ago, by an Irish philosopher called Furrier, on
account of his keeping a retail shop for cat peltries and other
furs. Pundit knows, you know; there can be no mistake about it.
How very wonderfully do we see verified every day, the profound
observation of the Hindoo Aries Tottle (as quoted by
Pundit)—“Thus must we say that, not once or twice, or a few
times, but with almost infinite repetitions, the same opinions
come round in a circle among men.”

April 2.—Spoke to-day the magnetic cutter in charge of the middle
section of floating telegraph wires. I learn that when this
species of telegraph was first put into operation by Horse, it
was considered quite impossible to convey the wires over sea, but
now we are at a loss to comprehend where the difficulty lay! So
wags the world. Tempora mutantur—excuse me for quoting the
Etruscan. What would we do without the Atalantic telegraph?
(Pundit says Atlantic was the ancient adjective.) We lay to a few
minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among
other glorious news, that civil war is raging in Africa, while
the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in Yurope and
Ayesher. Is it not truly remarkable that, before the magnificent
light shed upon philosophy by Humanity, the world was accustomed
to regard War and Pestilence as calamities? Do you know that
prayers were actually offered up in the ancient temples to the
end that these evils (!) might not be visited upon mankind? Is it
not really difficult to comprehend upon what principle of
interest our forefathers acted? Were they so blind as not to
perceive that the destruction of a myriad of individuals is only
so much positive advantage to the mass!

April 3.—It is really a very fine amusement to ascend the
rope-ladder leading to the summit of the balloon-bag, and thence
survey the surrounding world. From the car below you know the
prospect is not so comprehensive—you can see little vertically.
But seated here (where I write this) in the luxuriously-cushioned
open piazza of the summit, one can see everything that is going
on in all directions. Just now there is quite a crowd of balloons
in sight, and they present a very animated appearance, while the
air is resonant with the hum of so many millions of human voices.
I have heard it asserted that when Yellow or (Pundit will have
it) Violet, who is supposed to have been the first aeronaut,
maintained the practicability of traversing the atmosphere in all
directions, by merely ascending or descending until a favorable
current was attained, he was scarcely hearkened to at all by his
contemporaries, who looked upon him as merely an ingenious sort
of madman, because the philosophers (?) of the day declared the
thing impossible. Really now it does seem to me quite
unaccountable how any thing so obviously feasible could have
escaped the sagacity of the ancient savans. But in all ages the
great obstacles to advancement in Art have been opposed by the
so-called men of science. To be sure, our men of science are not
quite so bigoted as those of old:—oh, I have something so queer
to tell you on this topic. Do you know that it is not more than a
thousand years ago since the metaphysicians consented to relieve
the people of the singular fancy that there existed but two
possible roads for the attainment of Truth! Believe it if you
can! It appears that long, long ago, in the night of Time, there
lived a Turkish philosopher (or Hindoo possibly) called Aries
Tottle. This person introduced, or at all events propagated what
was termed the deductive or a priori mode of investigation. He
started with what he maintained to be axioms or “self-evident
truths,” and thence proceeded “logically” to results. His
greatest disciples were one Neuclid, and one Cant. Well, Aries
Tottle flourished supreme until advent of one Hog, surnamed the
“Ettrick Shepherd,” who preached an entirely different system,
which he called the a posteriori or inductive. His plan referred
altogether to Sensation. He proceeded by observing, analyzing,
and classifying facts-instantiae naturae, as they were affectedly
called—into general laws. Aries Tottle’s mode, in a word, was
based on noumena; Hog’s on phenomena. Well, so great was the
admiration excited by this latter system that, at its first
introduction, Aries Tottle fell into disrepute; but finally he
recovered ground and was permitted to divide the realm of Truth
with his more modern rival. The savans now maintained the
Aristotelian and Baconian roads were the sole possible avenues to
knowledge. “Baconian,” you must know, was an adjective invented
as equivalent to Hog-ian and more euphonious and dignified.

Now, my dear friend, I do assure you, most positively, that I
represent this matter fairly, on the soundest authority; and you
can easily understand how a notion so absurd on its very face
must have operated to retard the progress of all true
knowledge—which makes its advances almost invariably by intuitive
bounds. The ancient idea confined investigations to crawling; and
for hundreds of years so great was the infatuation about Hog
especially, that a virtual end was put to all thinking, properly
so called. No man dared utter a truth to which he felt himself
indebted to his Soul alone. It mattered not whether the truth was
even demonstrably a truth, for the bullet-headed savans of the
time regarded only the road by which he had attained it. They
would not even 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 neither the category Aries (that is to say
Ram) nor under the category Hog, why then 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
the greatest amount of truth would be attained in any long series
of ages, for the repression of imagination was an evil not to be
compensated for by any superior certainty in the ancient modes of
investigation. The error of these Jurmains, these Vrinch, these
Inglitch, and these Amriccans (the latter, by the way, were our
own immediate progenitors), was an error quite analogous with
that of the wiseacre who fancies that he must necessarily see an
object the better the more closely he holds it to his eyes. These
people blinded themselves by details. When they proceeded
Hoggishly, their “facts” were by no means always facts—a matter
of little consequence had it not been for assuming that they were
facts and must be facts because they appeared to be such. When
they proceeded on the path of the Ram, their course was scarcely
as straight as 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 been rejected. For example—“Ex
nihilo nihil fit”; “a body cannot act where it is not”; “there
cannot exist antipodes”; “darkness cannot come out of light”—all
these, and a dozen other similar propositions, formerly admitted
without hesitation as axioms, were, even at the period of which I
speak, seen to be untenable. How absurd in these people, then, to
persist in putting faith in “axioms” as immutable bases of Truth!
But even out of the mouths of their soundest reasoners it is easy
to demonstrate the futility, the impalpability of their axioms in
general. Who was the soundest of their logicians? Let me see! I
will go and ask Pundit and be back in a minute.... Ah, here we
have it! Here is a book written nearly a thousand years ago and
lately translated from the Inglitch—which, by the way, appears to
have been the rudiment of the Amriccan. Pundit says it is
decidedly the cleverest ancient work on its topic, Logic. The
author (who was much thought of in his day) was one Miller, or
Mill; and we find it recorded of him, as a point of some
importance, that he had a mill-horse called Bentham. But let us
glance at 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.” What modern in his senses would ever think of
disputing this truism? The only wonder with us must be, how it
happened that Mr. Mill conceived it necessary even to hint at any
thing so obvious. So far good—but let us turn over another paper.
What have we here?—“Contradictories cannot both 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 it cannot be
at the same time a tree and not a tree. Very well; but I ask him
why. His reply is this—and never pretends to be any thing else
than this—“Because it is impossible to conceive that
contradictories can both be true.” But this is no answer at all,
by his own showing, for has he not just admitted as a truism that
“ability or inability to conceive is in no case to be received as
a criterion of axiomatic truth.”

Now I do not complain of these ancients so much because their
logic is, by their own showing, utterly baseless, worthless and
fantastic altogether, as because of their pompous and imbecile
proscription of all other roads of Truth, of all other means for
its attainment than the two preposterous paths—the one of
creeping and the one of crawling—to which they have dared to
confine the Soul that loves nothing so well as to soar.

By the by, my dear friend, do you not think it would have puzzled
these ancient dogmaticians to have determined by which of their
two roads it was that the most important and most sublime of all
their truths was, in effect, attained? I mean the truth of
Gravitation. Newton owed it to Kepler. Kepler admitted that his
three laws were guessed at—these three laws of all laws which led
the great Inglitch mathematician to his principle, the basis of
all physical principle—to go behind which we must enter the
Kingdom of Metaphysics: Kepler guessed—that is to say imagined.
He was essentially a “theorist”—that word now of so much
sanctity, formerly an epithet of contempt. Would it not have
puzzled these old moles too, to have explained by which of the
two “roads” a cryptographist unriddles a cryptograph of more than
usual secrecy, or by which of the two roads Champollion directed
mankind to those enduring and almost innumerable truths which
resulted from his deciphering the Hieroglyphics.

One word more on this topic and I will be done boring you. Is it
not passing strange that, with their eternal prattling about
roads to Truth, these bigoted people missed what we now so
clearly perceive to be the great highway—that of Consistency?
Does it not seem singular how they should have failed to deduce
from the works of God the vital fact that a perfect consistency
must be an absolute truth! How plain has been our progress since
the late announcement of this proposition! Investigation has been
taken out of the hands of the ground-moles and given, as a task,
to the true and only true thinkers, the men of ardent
imagination. These latter theorize. Can you not fancy the shout
of scorn with which my words would be received by our progenitors
were it possible for them to be now looking over my shoulder?
These men, I say, theorize; and their theories are simply
corrected, reduced, systematized—cleared, little by little, of
their dross of inconsistency—until, finally, a perfect
consistency stands apparent which even the most stolid admit,
because it is a consistency, to be an absolute and an
unquestionable truth.

April 4.—The new gas is doing wonders, in conjunction with the
new improvement with gutta percha. How very safe, commodious,
manageable, and in every respect convenient are our modern
balloons! Here is an immense one approaching us at the rate of at
least a hundred and fifty miles an hour. It seems to be crowded
with people—perhaps there are three or four hundred
passengers—and yet it soars to an elevation of nearly a mile,
looking down upon poor us with sovereign contempt. Still a
hundred or even two hundred miles an hour is slow travelling
after all. Do you remember our flight on the railroad across the
Kanadaw continent?—fully three hundred miles the hour—that was
travelling. Nothing to be seen though—nothing to be done but
flirt, feast and dance in the magnificent saloons. Do you
remember what an odd sensation was experienced when, by chance,
we caught a glimpse of external objects while the cars were in
full flight? Every thing seemed unique—in one mass. For my part,
I cannot say but that I preferred the travelling by the slow
train of a hundred miles the hour. Here we were permitted to have
glass windows—even to have them open—and something like a
distinct view of the country was attainable.... Pundit says that
the route for the great Kanadaw railroad must have been in some
measure marked out about nine hundred years ago! In fact, he goes
so far as to assert that actual traces of a road are still
discernible—traces referable to a period quite as remote as that
mentioned. The track, it appears was double only; ours, you know,
has twelve paths; and three or four 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 of track—fifty
feet—is considered, indeed, scarcely secure enough. For my part,
I make no doubt that a track of some sort must have existed in
very remote times, as Pundit asserts; for nothing can be clearer,
to my 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 great railroad across the continent.

April 5.—I am almost devoured by _ennui_. Pundit is the only
conversible person on board; and he, poor soul! can speak of
nothing but antiquities. He has been occupied all the day in the
attempt to convince me that the ancient Amriccans governed
themselves!—did ever anybody hear of such an absurdity?—that they
existed in a sort of every-man-for-himself confederacy, after the
fashion of the “prairie dogs” that we read of in fable. He says
that they started with the queerest idea conceivable, viz: that
all men are born free and equal—this in the very teeth of the
laws of _gradation_ so visibly impressed upon all things both in
the moral and physical universe. Every man “voted,” as they
called it—that is to say meddled with public affairs—until at
length, it was discovered that what is everybody’s business is
nobody’s, and that the “Republic” (so the absurd thing was
called) was without a government at all. It is related, however,
that the first circumstance which disturbed, very particularly,
the self-complacency of the philosophers who constructed this
“Republic,” was the startling discovery that universal suffrage
gave opportunity for fraudulent schemes, by means of which any
desired number of votes might at any time be polled, without the
possibility of prevention or even detection, by any party which
should be merely villainous enough not to be ashamed of the
fraud. A little reflection upon this discovery sufficed to render
evident the consequences, which were that rascality must
predominate—in a word, that a republican government could never
be any thing but a rascally one. While the philosophers, however,
were busied in blushing at their stupidity in not having foreseen
these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new
theories, the matter 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, in comparison with which those of the fabulous
Zeros and Hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable. This
Mob (a foreigner, by-the-by), is said to have been the most
odious of all men that ever encumbered the earth. He was a giant
in stature—insolent, rapacious, filthy, had the gall 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
of forgetting—never to run directly contrary to the natural
analogies. As for Republicanism, no analogy could be found for it
upon the face of the earth—unless we except the case of the
“prairie dogs,” an exception which seems to demonstrate, if
anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of
government—for dogs.

April 6.—Last night had a fine view of Alpha Lyrae, whose disk,
through our captain’s spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a
degree, looking very 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, resembles him closely as regards its spots, its
atmosphere, and in many other particulars. It is only within the
last century, Pundit tells me, that the binary relation existing
between these two orbs began even to be suspected. The evident
motion of our system in the heavens was (strange to say!)
referred to an orbit about a prodigious star in the centre of the
galaxy. About this star, or at all events about a centre of
gravity common to all the globes of the Milky Way and supposed to
be near Alcyone in the Pleiades, every one of these globes was
declared to be revolving, our own performing the circuit in a
period of 117,000,000 of years! We, with our present lights, our
vast telescopic improvements, and so forth, of course find it
difficult to comprehend the ground of an idea such as this. Its
first propagator was one Mudler. He was led, we must presume, to
this wild hypothesis by mere analogy in the first instance; but,
this being the case, he should have at least adhered to analogy
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 locality near which, at least, must be
situated this inconceivable central sun. The astronomer, perhaps,
at this point, took refuge in the suggestion of non-luminosity;
and here analogy was suddenly let fall. But even admitting the
central orb non-luminous, how did he manage to explain its
failure to be rendered visible by the incalculable host of
glorious suns glaring in all directions about it? No doubt what
he finally maintained was merely a centre of gravity common to
all the revolving orbs—but here again analogy must have been let
fall. Our system revolves, it is true, about a common centre of
gravity, but it does this in connection with and in consequence
of a material sun whose mass more than counterbalances the rest
of the system. The mathematical circle is a curve composed of an
infinity of straight lines; but this idea of the circle—this idea
of it which, in regard to all earthly geometry, we consider as
merely the mathematical, in contradistinction from the practical,
idea—is, in sober fact, the practical conception which alone we
have any right to entertain in respect to those Titanic circles
with which 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 single step toward the comprehension of a
circuit so unutterable! It would scarcely 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 of our sun along
such a circumference—that the direction of our system in such an
orbit—would, to any human perception, deviate in the slightest
degree from a straight line even in a million of years, is a
proposition not to be entertained; and yet these ancient
astronomers were absolutely cajoled, it appears, into believing
that a decisive curvature had become apparent during the brief
period of their astronomical history—during the mere point—during
the utter nothingness of two or three thousand years! How
incomprehensible, that considerations such as this did not at
once indicate to them the true state of affairs—that of the
binary revolution of our sun and Alpha Lyrae around a common
centre of gravity!

April 7.—Continued last night our astronomical amusements. Had a
fine view of the five Neptunian asteroids, and watched with much
interest the putting up of a huge impost on a couple of lintels
in the new temple at Daphnis in the moon. It was amusing to think
that creatures so diminutive as the lunarians, and bearing so
little resemblance to humanity, yet evinced a mechanical
ingenuity so much superior to our own. One finds it difficult,
too, to conceive the vast masses which these people handle so
easily, to be as light as our own reason tells us they actually
are.

April 8.—Eureka! Pundit is in his glory. A balloon from Kanadaw
spoke us to-day and threw on board several late papers; they
contain some exceedingly curious information relative to
Kanawdian or rather Amriccan antiquities. You know, I presume,
that laborers have for some months been 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, its northern
boundary was always (as far back as any record extends) a
rivulet, or rather a very narrow arm of the sea. This arm was
gradually widened until it attained its present breadth—a mile.
The whole length of the island is nine miles; the breadth varies
materially. The entire area (so Pundit says) was, about eight
hundred years ago, densely packed with houses, some of them
twenty stories high; land (for some most unaccountable reason)
being considered as especially precious just in this vicinity.
The disastrous earthquake, however, of the year 2050, so totally
uprooted and overwhelmed the town (for it was almost too large to
be called a village) that the most indefatigable of our
antiquarians have never yet been able to obtain from the site any
sufficient data (in the shape of coins, medals or inscriptions)
wherewith to build up even the ghost of a theory concerning the
manners, customs, &c., &c., &c., of the aboriginal inhabitants.
Nearly all that we have hitherto known of them is, that they were
a portion of the Knickerbocker tribe of savages infesting the
continent at its first discovery by Recorder Riker, a knight of
the Golden Fleece. They were by no means uncivilized, however,
but cultivated various arts and even sciences after a fashion of
their own. It is related of them that they were acute in many
respects, but were oddly afflicted with monomania for building
what, in the ancient Amriccan, was denominated “churches”—a kind
of pagoda instituted for the 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 natural protuberance of the
region just below the small of the back—although, most
unaccountably, this deformity was looked upon altogether in the
light of a beauty. One or two pictures of these singular women
have in fact, been miraculously preserved. They look very odd,
very—like something between a turkey-cock and a dromedary.

Well, these few details are nearly all that have descended to us
respecting the ancient Knickerbockers. It seems, however, that
while digging in the centre of the emperors garden, (which, you
know, covers the whole island), some of the workmen unearthed a
cubical and evidently chiseled block of granite, weighing several
hundred pounds. It was in good preservation, having received,
apparently, little injury from the convulsion which entombed it.
On one of its surfaces was a marble slab with (only think of it!)
an inscription—a legible inscription. Pundit is in ecstacies.
Upon detaching the slab, a cavity appeared, containing a leaden
box filled with various coins, a long scroll of names, several
documents which appear to resemble newspapers, with other matters
of intense interest to the antiquarian! There can be no doubt
that all these are genuine Amriccan relics belonging to the tribe
called Knickerbocker. The papers thrown on board our balloon are
filled with fac-similes of the coins, MSS., typography, &c., &c.
I copy for your amusement 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, so there can be no mistake about it. From the few words
thus preserved, we glean several important items of knowledge,
not the least interesting of which is the fact that a thousand
years ago actual monuments had fallen into disuse—as was all very
proper—the people contenting themselves, as we do now, with a
mere indication of the design to erect a monument at some future
time; a corner-stone being cautiously laid by itself “solitary
and alone” (excuse me for quoting the great American poet
Benton!), as a guarantee of the magnanimous intention. We
ascertain, too, very distinctly, from this admirable inscription,
the how as well as the where and the what, of the great surrender
in question. As to the where, it was Yorktown (wherever that
was), and as to the what, it was General Cornwallis (no doubt
some wealthy dealer in corn). He was surrendered. The inscription
commemorates the surrender of—what?—why, “of Lord Cornwallis.”
The only question is what could the savages wish him surrendered
for. But when we remember that these savages were undoubtedly
cannibals, we are led to the conclusion that they intended him
for sausage. As to the how of the surrender, no language can be
more explicit. Lord Cornwallis was surrendered (for sausage)
“under the auspices of the Washington Monument Association”—no
doubt a charitable institution for the depositing of
corner-stones.—But, Heaven bless me! what is the matter? Ah, I
see—the balloon has collapsed, and we shall have a tumble into
the sea. I have, therefore, only time enough to add that, from a
hasty inspection of the fac-similes of newspapers, &c., &c., I
find that the great men in those days among the Amriccans, were
one John, a smith, and one Zacchary, a tailor.

Good-bye, until I see you again. Whether you ever get this letter
or not is point of little importance, as I write altogether for
my own amusement. I shall cork the MS. up in a bottle, however,
and throw it into the sea.

Yours everlastingly,
PUNDITA.

THE DUC DE L’OMELETTE.

And stepped at once into a cooler clime.—_Cowper_.

Keats fell by a criticism. Who was it died of “The Andromache”?
{*1} Ignoble souls!—De L’Omelette perished of an ortolan.
_L’histoire en est brève_. Assist me, Spirit of Apicius!

A golden cage bore the little winged wanderer, enamored, melting,
indolent, to the _Chaussée D’Antin_, from its home in far Peru.
From its queenly possessor La Bellissima, to the Duc De
L’Omelette, six peers of the empire conveyed the happy bird.

That night the Duc was to sup alone. In the privacy of his bureau
he reclined languidly on that ottoman for which he sacrificed his
loyalty in outbidding his king—the notorious ottoman of Cadêt.

He buries his face in the pillow. The clock strikes! Unable to
restrain his feelings, his Grace swallows an olive. At this
moment the door gently opens to the sound of soft music, and lo!
the most delicate of birds is before the most enamored of men!
But what inexpressible dismay now overshadows the countenance of
the Duc?—“_Horreur!—chien! Baptiste!—l’oiseau! ah, bon Dieu! cet
oiseau modeste que tu as déshabillé de ses plumes, et que tu as
servi sans papier!_” It is superfluous to say more:—the Duc
expired in a paroxysm of disgust.

“Ha! ha! ha!” said his Grace on the third day after his decease.

“He! he! he!” replied the Devil faintly, drawing himself up with
an air of _hauteur_.

“Why, surely you are not serious,” retorted De L’Omelette. “I
have sinned—c’est vrai—but, my good sir, consider!—you have no
actual intention of putting such—such barbarous threats into
execution.”

“No _what?_” said his majesty—“come, sir, strip!”