The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE
quickness of perception that he counted all the sepa.
rate motions of an elastic body, while it was springing
backwards and forwards at the rate of nine hundred
millions of times in a second."'
"Absurd!" said the king.
"' Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid
that nobody ever yet saw, could make the corpses of
his friends brandish their arms, kick out their legs,
fight, or even get up and dance at his will.2 Another
had cultivated his voice to so great an extent that he
could have made himself heard from one end of the
earth to the other.8 Another had so long an arm
that he could sit down in Damascus and indite a
letter at Bagdad-or indeed at any distance whatsoever.4 Another commanded the lightning to come
down to him out of the heavens, and it came at his
call; and served him for a plaything when it came.
Another took two loud sounds and out of them made
a silence. Another constructed a deep darkness out
of two brilliant lights.5 Another made ice in a red1 Newton demonstrated that the retina, beneath the influence of
the violet ray of the spectrum, vibrated 9oo,ooo,ooo of times in a
second.
2 The Voltaic pile.
8 The Electro-Telegraph transmits intelligence instantaneously - at least so far as regards any distance upon the earth.
4 Electro-Telegraph Printing Apparatus.
6 Common experiments in Natural Philosophy. If two red
rays from two luminous points be admitted into a dark chamber so
as to fall on a white surface, and differ in their length by o.oooo0000258
of an inch, their intensity is doubled. So also if the difference in
length be any whole-number multiple of that fraction. A multiple
by 2*, 3*, &c., gives an intensity equal to one ray only; but a multiple by 2i, 3j, &c., gives the result of total darkness. In violet
rays similar effects arise when the difference in length is o.ooox57
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