Читать книгу The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918 онлайн

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A correspondent, who is evidently fully master of details, which he has given at length, informs me that “The Moon Hoax” first appeared in the New York Sun, of which R.A. Locke was editor. It so much resembled a story then recently published by Edgar A. Poe, in a Southern paper, “Adventures of Hans Pfaall,” that some New York journals published the two side by side. Mr. Locke, when he left the New York Sun, started another paper, and discovered the manuscript of Mungo Park; but this did not deceive. The Sun, however, continued its career, and had a great success in an account of a balloon voyage from England to America, in seventy-five hours, by Mr. Monck Mason, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and others.

I have no doubt that M. Nicollet was the author of “The Moon Hoax,” written in a way which marks the practised observatory astronomer beyond all doubt, and by evidence seen in the most minute details. Nicollet had an eye to Europe. I suppose that he took Poe’s story and made it a basis for his own. Mr. Locke, it would seem, when he attempted a fabrication for himself, did not succeed.