"Edgar Allen Poe - The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

Another said that, indeed, Bullet-head had shown much X-uberance of
fancy.

A third admitted him X-entric, but no more.

A fourth could only suppose it the Yankee's design to X-press, in a
general way, his X-asperation.

'Say, rather, to set an X-ample to posterity,' suggested a fifth.

That Bullet-head had been driven to an extremity, was clear to all;
and in fact, since that editor could not be found, there was some
talk about lynching the other one.

The more common conclusion, however, was that the affair was, simply,
X-traordinary and in-X-plicable. Even the town mathematician
confessed that he could make nothing of so dark a problem. X, every.
body knew, was an unknown quantity; but in this case (as he properly
observed), there was an unknown quantity of X.

The opinion of Bob, the devil (who kept dark about his having 'X-ed
the paragrab'), did not meet with so much attention as I think it
deserved, although it was very openly and very fearlessly expressed.
He said that, for his part, he had no doubt about the matter at all,
that it was a clear case, that Mr. Bullet-head 'never could be
persuaded fur to drink like other folks, but vas continually
a-svigging o' that ere blessed XXX ale, and as a naiteral
consekvence, it just puffed him up savage, and made him X (cross) in
the X-treme.'

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METZENGERSTEIN

Pestis eram vivus - moriens tua mors ero.

-- _Martin Luther_

HORROR and fatality have been stalking abroad in all ages. Why
then give a date to this story I have to tell? Let it suffice to say,
that at the period of which I speak, there existed, in the interior
of Hungary, a settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the
Metempsychosis. Of the doctrines themselves - that is, of their
falsity, or of their probability - I say nothing. I assert, however,
that much of our incredulity - as La Bruyere says of all our
unhappiness - "_vient de ne pouvoir ъtre seuls_." {*1}