The Works of Edgar Allan Poe : Volume 4: Large Print

What o'clock is it?-Old Saying.EVERYBODY knows, in a general way, that the finest place in the world is-or, alas, was-the Dutch borough of Vondervotteimittiss.

Yet as it lies some distance from any of the mainroads, being in a somewhat out-of-the-way situation, there are perhaps very few of myreaders who have ever paid it a visit.

For the benefit of those who have not, therefore, itwill be only proper that I should enter into some account of it. And this is indeed the morenecessary, as with the hope of enlisting public sympathy in behalf of the inhabitants, Idesign here to give a history of the calamitous events which have so lately occurred withinits limits.

No one who knows me will doubt that the duty thus self-imposed will beexecuted to the best of my ability, with all that rigid impartiality, all that cautiousexamination into facts, and diligent collation of authorities, which should ever distinguishhim who aspires to the title of historian.By the united aid of medals, manuscripts, and inscriptions, I am enabled to say, positively,that the borough of Vondervotteimittiss has existed, from its origin, in precisely the samecondition which it at present preserves.

Of the date of this origin, however, I grieve that Ican only speak with that species of indefinite definiteness which mathematicians are, attimes, forced to put up with in certain algebraic formulae.

The date, I may thus say, inregard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than any assignable quantitywhatsoever.