Poe's Works

Raising the Wind; or, Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences Hey, diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle. Since the world began there have been two Jeremys. The one wrote a Jeremiad about usury, and was called Jeremy Bentham. He has been much admired by Mr. John Neal, and was a great man in a small way. The other gave name to the most important of the Exact Sciences, and was a great man in a great way — I may say, indeed, in the very greatest of ways. Diddling — or the abstract idea conveyed by the verb to diddle — is sufficiently well understood. Yet the fact, ...

The Devil in The Belfry. An Extravaganza. What o’clock is it? — Old Saying. Every body knows, in a general way, that the finest place in the world is — or, alas! was — the Dutch borough of Vondervotteimittiss. Yet, as it lies some distance from any of the main roads, being in a somewhat out of the way situation, there are, perhaps, very few of my readers who have ever paid it a visit. For the benefit of those who have not, therefore, it will be only proper that I should enter into some account of it. And this is, indeed, the more evident, as, with the hope of ...

A Descent into the Maelström The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus. Joseph Glanville. WE had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak. “Not long ago,” said he at length, “and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there ...

Loss Of Breath A TALE A LA BLACKWOOD. O breathe not, &c. — Moore's Melodies. The most notorious ill-fortune must, in the end, yield to the untiring courage of philosophy — as the most stubborn city to the ceaseless vigilance of an enemy. Salmanezer, as we have it in the holy writings, lay three years before Samaria; yet it fell. Sardanapalus — see Diodorus — maintained himself seven in Nineveh; but to no purpose. Troy expired at the close of the second lustrum; and Azoth, as Aristæus declares upon his honor as a gentleman, opened at last her gates to Psammitticus, after ...