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To their Excellencies Von Underduk and Rub-a-dub, President and
Vice-President of the States' College of Astronomers, in the city of
Rotterdam.
"Your Excellencies may perhaps be able to remember an humble artizan, by
name Hans Pfaall, and by occupation a mender of bellows, who, with three
others, disappeared from Rotterdam, about five years ago, in a manner
which must have been considered by all parties at once sudden, and
extremely unaccountable. If, however, it so please your Excellencies, I,
the writer of this communication, am the identical Hans Pfaall himself.
It is well known to most of my fellow citizens, that for the period of
forty years I continued to occupy the little square brick building, at
the head of the alley called Sauerkraut, in which I resided at the time
of my disappearance. My ancestors have also resided therein time out of
mind--they, as well as myself, steadily following the respectable and
indeed lucrative profession of mending of bellows. For, to speak the
truth, until of late years, that the heads of all the people have been
set agog with politics, no better business than my own could an
honest citizen of Rotterdam either desire or deserve. Credit was good,
employment was never wanting, and on all hands there was no lack of
either money or good-will. But, as I was saying, we soon began to feel
the effects of liberty and long speeches, and radicalism, and all that
sort of thing. People who were formerly, the very best customers in the
world, had now not a moment of time to think of us at all. They had, so
they said, as much as they could do to read about the revolutions, and
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