EDGAR ALLEN POE ON THE ALPHADELPHIA TOCSIN

EDGAR ALLEN POE ON THE ALPHADELPHIA TOCSIN

[Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Alphadelphia Tocsin,” from The Weekly Mirror (New York), January 18, 1845, p. 227.]

THE ALPHADELPHIA TOCSIN. — (Phbus, what a name, to fill the sounding trump of future fame!) — is the title of a new journal published at Alphadelphia, Michigan, and “devoted to the interests of the laboring classes;” by which we presume are intended the classes who have to pronounce every morning the great appellation of the paper itself. Such a work should not want editors, and accordingly we are informed that it has eight. What on earth is the meaning of Alphadelphia? — is the “Alphadelphia Tocsin” the Tocsin of the city of double A’s? — if so, the idea is too easily slipped into A double S.