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.

TALES OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE

THE UNPARALLELED ADVENTURE
OF ONE HANS PFAALL
With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
Tom O'Bedlam's Song.
BY late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems
to be in a high state of philosophical excitement.
Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature
so completely unexpected, so entirely novel, so utterly
at variance with preconceived opinions, as to leave no
doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in
an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and
astronomy together by the ears.
It appears that on the -- day of -- (I am not
positive about the date), a vast crowd of people,
for purposes not specifically mentioned, were assembled
in the great square of the Exchange in the well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm —
unusually so for the season; there was hardly a breath
of air stirring; and the multitude were in no bad
humor at being now and then besprinkled with friendly
showers of momentary duration, that fell from large
white masses of cloud profusely distributed about the
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