ns he speaks of, though
I knew them by different names. Miss Poke says she wonders if it's all
true, which I wunt tell her, seeing that a little unsartainty makes a
woman rational. As to my navigating without geometry, thats a matter
that wasn't worth booking, for it's no curiosity in these parts, bating
a look at the compass once or twice a day, and so I take my leave of
you, with offers to do any commission for you among the Sealing Islands,
for which I sail to-morrow, wind and weather permitting.

"Yours to sarve, NOAH POKE."

"To the Author of THE SPY, Esquire, ------ town, ------ county, York
state.

"P. S.--I always told Sir John to steer clear of too much journalizing,
but he did nothing but write, night and day, for a week; and as you
brew, so you must bake. The wind has chopped, and we shall take our
anchor this tide; so no more at present.

"N. B.--Sir John is a little out about my eating the monkey, which I
did, four years before I fell in with him, down on the Spanish Main. It
was not bad food to the taste, but was wonderful narvous to the eye. I
r'ally thought I had got hold of Miss Poke's youngest born."

THE MONIKINS.

CHAPTER I. THE AUTHOR'S PEDIGREE,--ALSO THAT OF HIS FATHER.

The philosopher who broaches a new theory is bound to furnish, at least,
some elementary proofs of the reasonableness of his positions, and the
historian who ventures to record marvels that have hitherto been hid
from human knowledge, owes it to a decent regard to the opinions of
others, to produce some credible testimony in favor of his veracity.
I am peculiarly placed in regard to these two great essentials having
little more than its plausibility to offer in favor of my philosophy,
and no other witness than myself to establish the important facts that
are now about to be laid before the reading world for the first time.
In this dilemma, I fully feel the weight of responsibility under which
I stand; for there are truths of so little apparent probability as to
appear fictitious, and fictions so like the truth that the ordinary
observer is very apt to affirm that he was an eye-witness to their
existence: two facts that all our historians would do well to bear
in mind, since a knowledge of the circumstances might spare them
the mortification of having testimony that cost a deal of trouble,
discredited in the one case, and save a vast deal of painful and
unnecessary labor, in the other. Thrown upon myself, th