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Chapter 1 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age ofwisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, itwas the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was theseason of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it…
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Chapter 1 Nil sapientiæ odiosius acumine nimio.—Seneca. At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18-,I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum,in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little backlibrary, or book-closet, au troisième, No. 33, Rue Dunôt,Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour…
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Chapter 2 It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November,before the first of the persons with whom this history has business.The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered upShooter’s Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the…
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Chapter 2 Truth is stranger than fiction.—Old Saying Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a work which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American—if we…
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Chapter 3 The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways;nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to thevastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus. —Joseph Glanville. We had now reached the summit of…
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Chapter 3 A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature isconstituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. Asolemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that everyone of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that everyroom in every one of them encloses its own…