The story of the Sun, New York: 1833-1928 / by Frank M. O'Brien ; with an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell ...

RICHARD LOCKE'S MOON HOAX

39

century. He was born on September 22, 1800, but his
birthplace was not New York, as his contemporary
biographers wrote. It was East Brent, Somersetshire,
England. His early American friends concealed this fact
when writing of Locke, for they feared that his English
birth (all the wounds of war had not healed) would keep
him out of some of the literary clubs. He was educated
by his mother and by private tutors until he was nineteen,
when he entered Cambridge. While still a student he
contributed to the Bee, the Imperial Magazine, and other
English publications. When he left Cambridge he had
the hardihood to start the London Republican, the title
of which describes its purpose. This was a failure, for
Lon(lon declined to warm to the theories of American
democracy, no matter how scholarly their expression.
Ablndoniig the Republican, young Locke devoted
hilnself to literature and science. He ran a periodical
called the Cornucopia for about six months, but it was
not a financial success, and in 1832, with his wife and
infant daughter, he went to New York. Colonel Webb
put him at work on his paper.
While he lived in London, Locke was a regular reader
of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, and he
brought some copies of it to America. One of these, an
issue of 1826, contained an article by Dr. Thomas Dick,
of Dundee, suggesting the feasibility of communicating
with the moon, by means of great stone symbols on the
face of the earth. The people of the moon-if there
were any-would fathom the diagrams and reply in a
similar way. Dr. Dick explained afterward that he wrote
this piece with the idea of satirizing a certain coterie of
eccentric German astronomers.