Répondirent qu'ils eftoient habitans de la Lune.

When I got home, I found a book by Cardano in my study, open on the table, a book I had not put there. I hadn't intended to read it at all, but on approaching it my eyes fell, as if compelled to see, upon the passage in his memoir when he is up one evening, reading by candlelight, when two tall old men passed through the closed doors of his chamber. He asked them many things, but when he asked who they were, they told him they were from the Moon, and vanished.

Naturally, I was surprised a book had put itself on the table and opened itself on that page of all pages. I took it to be a sign I must prove to all the Moon is a world like ours. I mean, here I am, this evening having spoken about this very subject, looking at the one book in the world treating of that topic in this way; it has flown down from its shelf and, now possessed of reason I assume, opened itself to draw my eye to that most marvellous adventure on the page, casting its reflection upon my imagination and setting my mind in motion!

Surely, I thought, the two tall old men who had appeared to Cardano must have set this book out for me to find, to save themselves the trouble of saying it all a second time. There was only one way to find out; one way or another, I must climb up there and ask them.

Why not? Prometheus ascended Heaven to steal fire, and I am at least as tough as he was. What could possibly go wrong?

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A Journey to the Moon

Viaje a la Luna 1 White bed on a grey wall. Across the bedclothes a dance unfolds 13 & 22. First two, then more till they cover the bed like ants. 2 The bedclothes are torn off the bed by an invisible hand. 3 Big feet run fast in black and white lozenged socks. 4 A frightened head gaze fixed on a point dissolves into a wire head against a backdrop of water. 5 Letters help help help double exposure a vulva moving up and down. 6 A long corridor traversed by the machine a window down the end. 7 A view of Broadway by night. 8 Dissolve to previous scene. 9 A pair of legs swing quickly. 10 Legs dissolve into a mass of trembling hands. 11 Trembling hands double-exposure a weeping child. 12 The weeping child double-exposure the woman who beats him. 13 Fade to the long corridor camera moving backwards fast. 14 At the end wide shot of an eye double-exposure a fish dissolving into what follows. 15 Falling fast through a window letters double-exposed in blue help help . 16 Dissolve...

I could tell Mr. Printer - if I dare be so bold - that he had more Tongue than Wit.

Dipenidion - Nich. Take of Penidies, two ounces; Pinenuts, Sweet Almonds blanched, White Poppy seeds, of each three drams and one scruple; Cinnamon, Cloves, Ginger, juice of Liquoris, Gum Tragacanth and Arabic, White Starch, the Four Greater Cold Seeds husked, of each one dram and a half; Camphire, seven grains; White Sugar, so much as is sufficient. Make it into a powder, and with Syrup of Violets you may make it up in form of an electuary. I could tell Mr. Printer - if I dare be so bold - that he had more tongue than wit, when he made that Apology at the latter end of the College's masterpiece; for at the last sentence of this receipt, here are certain words left out, and amongst them the principal verb, which how gross an error it is, I leave to the consideration of every scholar who is able to translate a piece of Latin into English. It helps the vices of the breast, coughs, colds, hoarseness, and consumptions of the lungs, as also such as spit matter. You may mix it with any...

The Thrice-Greatest Intellingencer.

The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus in XVII books. Translated formerly out of the Arabic into Greek and thence into Latin and Dutch and now out of the original into English By that learned divine Doctor Everard. London Printed by Robert White for The Brewster and Greg. Moule at the Three Bibles in the Poultry under Mildred's Church. 1650 To the Reader Judicious Reader, This book may justly challenge the first place for antiquity from all the books in the world, being written some hundreds of years before Moses his time, as I shall endeavour to make good. The original - as far as is known to us - is Arabic, and several translations thereof have been published, as Greek, Latin, French, Dutch, &c. but never English before. It is a pity the learned translator - Doctor Everard - had not lived and received himself the hounour and thanks due to him from Englishmen, for his good will to and pains for them in translating a book of such infinite worth out o...

Paul Summers Young

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