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 Phaall, 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 Phaall 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.
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