Evening star. [volume], January 23, 1930, Page B-13, Image 29

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
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THE EVENING STORY
One of World-Famous Works of Literature
The Sphinx.
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE.
flEdtar Allan Poe. ISO9-iMt. was an
American poet and story-writer, author ot
“The Raver." - The Gold Bus." - The Pall
at the House ot Usher." "The Murders In
the Hue Morvue." "The Masque of the
lied." etc.)
Near the ck*e of an exceedingly
warm day I was sitting, book in hand,
at an open window, commanding,
through a long vista of the river banks,
a view of a distant hill, the face of
which nearest, my position had been
denuded by what is termed a land
slide of the principal portion of its
trees. Uplifting my eyes from the page,
they fell upon the naked face of the
hill, and upon an object—upon some
living monster of hideous - conformation,
which very rapidly made Its way from
the summit to the bottom, disappear
ing finally in the dense forest below.
As this creature came first in sight I
doubted my own sanity—or at least the
evidence of my own eyes; and many
minutes passed before I succeeded in
convincing myself that I was neither
mad or dreaming.
Estimating the sire of the creature
by comparison with the diameter of the
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Urge trees. which it passed—a few
giants of the forest which had escaped
the furv of the landallde —I concluded
it to be far larger than any ahlp of
the line In existence. I say ship of
the line, because the shape of the mon
ster suggested the idea —the hull of
one of our 74s might convey a very
tolerable conception of the general out
line.
The mouth of the animal was situ
ated at the extremity of a proboscis
(trunk) some SO or 70 feet in length,
and about as thick as the body of an
ordinary elephant. Near the root of
this trunk was an immense quantity
of black shaggy hair, more than could
have been supplied by the coats of a
score of buffaloes; and projecting from
this hair downwardly and laterally,
sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike
those of the wild boar, but of infinitely
greater dimensions. Extending forward,
parallel with the proboscis, and on
each side of it, was a gigantic staff,
30 or 40 feet in length, formed seem
ingly of pure crystal, and in shape a
perfect prism—it reflected in the most
gorgeous manner the rays of the de
clining sun. The trunk was fashioned
like a wedge with the apex to the earth.
TH E E YEN INO STAR, WASHINGTON. D. C., THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 1930.
From the trunk thera were outspread
two pairs of wings—each wing nearly
100 yards in length—one pair being
placed above the other, and all thickly
covered with metal acales, each scale
apparently some 10 or 12 feet In diam
eter. I observed that the upper and
lower tiers of wings were connected by
a strong chain.
But the chief peculiarity of this hor
rible thing was the representation of *
death's head, which covered nearly the
whole surface of its breast, and which
was, as accurately traced In glaring
white, upon the dark ground of the
body, as if it had been there carefully
designed by an artist. While I re
garded this terrific animal, and more
especially the appearance on Its breast,
with a feeling of horror and awe—with
a sentiment of forthcoming evil —I per
ceived the huge jaws at the extremity
of the proboscis suddenly expand them
selves, and from there proceeded a
sound so loud and so expressive of woe
that it struck upon my nerves like a
knell, and as the monster disappeared
at the foot of the hill, I fell in a
faint.
Upon recovering, my first impulse
was to inform my friend of what I had
seen and heard. At length, one eve
ning, some three or four days after the
occurrence, we were sitting together in
the room in which I had seen the ap
, parition—l occupying the same seat at
the same window, and he lounging on a
sofa near at hand. The association of
the place and time impelled me to
give him an account of the phenome
non. He heard me th the end—at first
laughed heartily—and then lapsed into
an excessively grave demeanor, as if
my insanity was a thing ’beyond sus
picion. %
At this instant I again had a distinct
view of the monster—to which, with a
shout of absolute terror, I now directed
his attention. He looked eagerly, but
maintained that he saw nothing—al
though I designated minutely the
• course of the creature as it made its
way down the naked face of the hill.
I was now immeasurably alarmed, for
I considered the vision either an omen
of my death or, worse, as the forerunner
of an attack of mania. I threw myself
passionately back In my chair and for
some moments buried my face in my
hands. When I uncovered my eyes the
apparition was no longer visible.
My host, however, had in some degree
resumed the calmness of his demeanor
and questioned me very rigorously in
respect to the conformation of the
visionary creature. When I had fully
satisfied him on this head he sightd
deeply, as if relieved of some intoler
able burden, and went on to talk, with
what I thought cruel calmness, of vari
ous points of speculative philosophy. I
renumber his insisting very especially
upon the idea that the principal source
of error in all human investigations lay
in the liability of the understanding to
. underrate or to overvalue the impor
tance of an object through mere mis
admeasurement of its nearness.
“To estimate properly, for example,”
he said, “the influence to be exercised
on mankind at large by the thorough
diffusion of democracy, the distance of
the epoch at which such diffusion may
possibly be accomplished, should not
fail to form an item‘in the estimate.
Yet can you tell me one writer on the
subject of government who has ever
thought this particular branch of the
subject worthy of discussion?”
He here paused for a moment,
stepped to a bookcase and brought
forth one of the ordinary synopses of
natural history. Requesting me then
to exchange seats with him, that he
might the better distinguish the fine
pript of the volume, he took my arm
chair at the window and, opening the
book, resumed his discourse very much
in the same tone as before.
“But for your exceeding minuteness,"
he said, “in describing the monster. I
might never have had it in my power
to demonstrate to you what it was. In
the first place let me read to you a
schoolboy account of the genus Sphinx,
of the family Crepuscularia, of the or
der Lepidoptera, which contains butter
flies and moths, of the class Insecta, or
Insects. The account runs thus:
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“‘Four membranous wings covered
with little colored scales of a metallic
appearance; mouth forming a rolled
proboscis, produced by an elongation of
the Jaws, upon the sides of which are
found the rudiments of mandibles and
downy palpi; the inferior wings re
tained to the superior by a stiff hah:
antennae In the form of an elongated
club, prismatic, abdomen pointed. The
death's-headed Sphinx has occasioned
much terror among the vulgar at times
by the melancholy kind of cry which it
utters and the insignia of death which
it wears upon its corslet.’ ”
"Ah, here it is!" he presently ex
claimed. "It is reascending the face
of the hill, and a very remarkable look
ing creature I admit it to be. Still, it
is by no means so large or so distant
as you Imagined it, for the fact is that
as it wriggles its way up this thread,
which some spider has wrought along
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the window sub. I find it to be about
the sixteenth of an inch in its extreme
length and also about the sixteenth
of an inch distant from the pupil of
my eye."
Such was the trick of perspective
which my aye had played me, project
ing, as it did, the image of this tiny
creature in gigantic dimensions against
the face of the opposite hill.
MINER’S BODY RECOVERED
One of 3 Victims in Pennsylvania
Pound Under Tons of Debris*
SCRANTON. Pa.. January 33 (JP).—
The body of Harold Van Sickle, one of
the men entombed in the Jermyn mines
of the Hudson Coal Co. Tuesday by a
fall of rock, was found by rescue work
ers las night. Tons of rock, ooal arid
dirt were removed before the body w*s
reached, ftescue workers believed that
it will be only a matter of hours before
they recover the bodies of the oth?r
entombed men.
- « •-
Forty ex-service men have been placed
in charge of dusting the 3,000.000 books
in the British Museum at London.
GREAT BEAUTY AID
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B-13