Poe's Works

Von Kempelen and his Discovery After the very minute and elaborate paper by Arago, to say nothing of the summary in ‘Silliman's Journal,’ with the detailed statement just published by Lieutenant Maury, it will not be supposed, of course, that in offering a few hurried remarks in reference to Von Kempelen's discovery, I have any design to look at the subject in a scientific point of view. My object is simply, in the first place, to say a few words of Von Kempelen himself (with whom, some years ago, I had the honor of a slight personal acquaintance), since everything which concerns ...

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade Truth is stranger than fiction— Old Saying Havingx had occasion, lately, in the course of some oriental investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a work which (like the Zohar of Simeon Ischaides) is scarcely known at all, even in Europe, and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American — if we except, perhaps, the author of the “Curiosities of American Literature;” — having had occasion, I say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to ...

Thou art the Man I will now play the Œdipus to the Rattleborough enigma. I will expound to you — as I alone can — the secret of the enginery that effected the Rattleborough miracle — the one — the true — the admitted — the undisputed — the indisputable miracle which put a definite end to infidelity among the Rattleburghers, and converted to the orthodoxy of the grandames, all the carnal-minded who had ventured to be skeptical before. This event — which I should be sorry to discuss in a tone of unsuitable levity — occurred in the summer of 18—. Mr Barnabas Shuttleworthy, one of the ...

A Tale of Jerusalem Intensos rigidam in frontem ascendere canos Passus erat. — LUCAN DE CATONE. A bristly bore. — TRANSLATION. “Let us hurry to the walls,” said Abel-Shittim to Buzi-Ben-Levi and Simeon the Pharisee, on the tenth day of the month Thammuz, in the year of the world Three Thousand Nine Hundred and Forty-one — “let us hasten to the ramparts adjoining the gate of Benjamin, which is in the city of David, and overlooking the camp of the uncircumcised, for it is the last hour of the fourth watch, being sunrise, and the idolaters, in fulfilment of the promise of ...