by Poe · Cluster: Essay · Critique of Progress · Common Man
Abstract
Satirical epistolary science-fiction set in 2848, a balloon-borne letter mocking democracy, scientific method and human progress; a manuscript-in-a-bottle frame satirizing the future’s contempt for the past.
Testo / Text
Parti / Parts
Readability (prose)56.7 Flesch ease10.8 FK grade14.1 Fog13% complex22 words/sent
Connections
Topoi: World Upside Down, Eternal Return Archetypes: Tyrant Motifs: Time, Journey, Letters and Writing, Ruins the Abbey, Stars Themes & Concepts: Satire of Society, Critique of Progress, Transience, Imagination Forms & Genres: Satire, Short Story Historical References: Industrial Revolution Settings: Ship
Testo integrale / Full text
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.