Text: George W. Eveleth, “Gentleman Editors,” Portland Transcript (Portland, ME) vol. 14, no. 22, September 14, 1850, p. 171

[page 171:]

GENTLEMEN EDITORS: — To satisfy the intimation which I gave you, that you should understand why I asked the publication of my “item” — It was offered in illustration of the doctrine of faith — faith in contradistinction to what is termed belief — faith such as led Abraham of old to “hope against hope” that he would be “the father of a great nation.” — Abraham's faith remained unshaken notwithstanding the multitude of opposing “facts” which lay in his path. So my faith continued strong in spite of all the columns of “facts” in opposition which the ingenuity of the Boston Penny Press gang could conjure up. Yea, it waxed stronger with each “fact” presented. To give one instance of the strength of this my faith. I wrote to the Rev. Dr. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, suggesting that he, or some other of the conclave of Literati in attendance upon the Rochester Rappers, should enter into communication with the spirit of Poe for the purpose of getting from him a true analysis of the circumstances connected with the “murder.” I fully believe that a correct and satisfactory explanation of the whole complicated web-work might be obtained in this way. As a kind of a text from which to start, I sent Dr. Griswold the following, which was written sometime before the trial of Professor Webster.

An item for Newspaper-readers: — Let the boys and girls who are awaiting agape and aghast the end of the horrible Parkman tragedy, take a little time, and step into some reading-room, where they may be furnished with No. 2 of “Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books, and with the fifteenth number of the fourth volume of F. Gleason's Flag of Our Union newspaper. Let them select from the former “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and from the latter, “Von Kempelen and his Discovery.” Let them carefully peruse these. Then let them go over again the accounts of the death of that “strange and fearful being,” that “melancholy man,” that “sad poet,” that “psychological phenomenon,” Edgar Allan Poe. Then let them read the late news by the Hades and Rochester Telegraph. Then, and finally, let them communicate with Poe through the medium of this Spirits’ Knocking-Machine, asking him to secure his friend, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, as counsel in behalf of the “murderer,” Prof. John White Webster.

I have corresponded relative to the same matter with several other of our literary men, among the number John Neal. James Russell Lowell, and Waldo Howard, Esq. But here, once for all, let me not be understood, from anything which I have said now and heretofore, as insinuating that the Parkman Tragedy, the Rochester Knockings, and the Paine Gas-Light are parts of one great Farce which the American Literati are enacting for the benefit of the public — no. not by any means.

And now Gentleman Editors, in conclusion, please add the following to those other guesses, and have the whole stereotyped as the articles of my Faith: —

I guess that that bustling brood of tit-mice philosophers, the little, long-nosed, lumber-headed Be getters of the daily newspapers, will in good time be set all a-gog and a-stare and a-scampering by the appearance in their midst of the “murdered Dr. Parkman,” and the “executed Prof. Webster,” not as shadows from the land of shades, gliding noiselessly at midnight, but as real, substantial men of flesh and blood, walking abroad in the day-light, and having upon them not even the smell of the cadaverousness of the grave. Yours faith-fully,

G. W. EVELETH.