of this by the excessive confidence with which Mr. James
Smith predicted that he would treat me as Zephaniah Stockdolloger (Sam
Slick calls it _slockdollager_) treated Goliah Quagg. He has announced his
{131} intention of bringing me, with a contrite heart, and clean
shaved,--4159265... razored down to 25,--to a camp-meeting of
circle-squarers. But there is this difference: Zephaniah only wanted to
pass the Colonel's smithy in peace; Mr. James Smith sought a fight with me.
As soon as this Budget began to appear, he oiled his own strap, and
attempted to treat me as the terrible Colonel would have treated the
inoffensive brother.

He is at liberty to try again.

THE MOON HOAX.

The Moon-hoax; or the discovery that the moon has a vast population of
human beings. By Richard Adams Locke.[226] New York, 1859, 8vo.

This is a reprint of the hoax already mentioned. I suppose R. A. Locke is
the name assumed by M. Nicollet.[227] The publisher informs us that when
the hoax first appeared day by day in a morning paper, the circulation
increased fivefold, and the paper obtained a permanent footing. Besides
this, an edition of 60,000 was sold off in less than one month.

The discovery was also published under the name of A. R. Grant.[228]
Sohncke's[229] _Bibliotheca Mathematica_ confounds this Grant with Prof. R.
Grant[230] of Glasgow, the author of the _History of Physical Astronomy_,
who is accordingly made to guarantee the discoveries in the moon. I hope
Adams Locke will not merge in J. C. Adams,[231] the co-discoverer of
Neptune. Sohncke gives the titles of {132} three French translations of the
Moon hoax at Paris, of one at Bordeaux, and of Italian translations at
Parma, Palermo, and Milan.

A Correspondent, who is evidently fully master of details, which he has
given at length, informs me that the Moon hoax appeared first 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 Pfaal," 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;[232] 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,[233] Mr. Harrison Ainsworth,[234] and others. I have