APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/poe/mellonta/MELLONTA

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                        Mellonta Tauta

To the Editor of the Lady's Book:-

I have the honour 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 by the transcendentalists and divers
for crotchets.-- Very truly,
                                            EDGAR A. POE
                              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 <i 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 one's
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 for
ever to be doomed to the thousand inconveniences of the balloon?  Will
nobody contrive a more expeditious mode of progress?  This 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 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
net-work 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 earthworm.  The worm
was carefully fed on mulberries--a kind of fruit resembling a
watermelon--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 milkweed.  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 India rubber
or rubber of whist, 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 way,
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 the 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 Atlantic 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 (as
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 favourable
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
anything 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 the 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, analysing,
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 that 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
investigation 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 <i 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
neither under 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 <i 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,' said 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 anything so obvious.  So far good--but let us
turn over another page.  What have we here?--'Contradictions 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 anything 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 <i 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 prating 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--<i 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?  Everything 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 <i 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 anything 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 everything into his own hands and set up a
despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous Zeros and
Hello- fagabaluses 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 an 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
everything 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 in the 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 contra-distinction from the practical, idea- -is, in
sober fact, the practical conception which alone we have any right to
entertain in respect of 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 towards
the comprehension of a circuit so unutterable!  It would scarcely be
paradoxical to say that a flash of lightning itself, travelling for ever
upon the circumference of this inconceivable circle, would still for
ever 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
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 to
Amriccan antiquities.  You know, I presume, that labourers 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 records
extend) 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 storeys 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 date (in the shape of coins, medals, or inscriptions)
wherewith to build up even the ghost of a theory concerning the manners,
customs, etc. etc., 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 a 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 emperor's garden (which, you know, covers
the whole island), some of the workmen unearthed a cubical and evidently
chiselled 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 ecstasies.  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, etc. etc.  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 Amriccan poet
Benton!) as a guarantee of the magnanimous <i 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 could 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 cornerstones.--  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 fac-similes of newspapers, etc., 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 a 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