The age-herald., 1897-11-21
SOME HISTORIC HOAXES lmpoSitionS That Have Been Prac-
 ticed on the Public. MANYINNOCENT PUBLISHERS Joe MuIhaitons fake-POes Balloon Story The Forgers of Manuscripts and Man
 ufacturers of Antiquities.

From the St. Louis e-Dem0crdS.
 The terrible hoax perpetrated last Sun day upon two papers of this city and several in New York, and elsewhere, in the republication of a document which was put in print in English certainly as early as 1855, and perhaps long before, and which has for hundreds of years been known, recalls other frauds Of srm- far description. There have been many such. and the latest sufferers may have the comfort cold though it be, of know ing that they are not the only Journass that have been imposed upon by wag- gish or designing persons. The peculiar character of the document whiclEs was foisted upon these papers as genuine and a new discovery would, CT itsetl, have inspired instant suspicion m the minds of well-informed men, for eVery scholar is fully aware of the Immense number of such forgeries, and the ols- cayery, or alleged discovery, or new mafiuscript purporting to be ancleht is enough to put the literary worla al o"Oe on its guard. .r 4ha Christian era deceptions of this nature were innumerable. TlschendorI ahe other scholars have made coIleCUohs oA the manuscripts purporttng to pc senu- inc and treating of the dlte ana tsiaeo ses of Christ, and great volumes nave peeIl filled with these forgeries. The carry Christian fathers were prolfhc or mdnu- scripts, and there is scafcely onaI9o'ea mentioned In the New Testament WHO'S name Is not connected with some alleso o,oenel enIstle acts or citations, VI sions or maxims, which were mahulac- tured outright by the monks, Wno' III a spirit of piety, concocted these and other documents, hoping thereby to ala ,s ene faith of the weak or assist the aevotlons s of the pious Knowing that thelr own names would attract no attention, the writers attributed their works 10 NeW Testament characters in the nope lnae the matter might thus become more use- fuI and thus originated the enormous @ mass of manuscripts from which the councils selected the New Testanlene canon as it now exists. But the deci- sions of the councils with regard 10 tile books were not universally receivegg' many cleries of learning and indepehu enee accepting some Of the writings ana raiecfing others. Thus arose con fusion which caused great numper OIL these apocryphal documents to De re- cefyed with more or less faYor py large branch of the church. The ma auu- scripts were hence preserved anu naeo been a source of annoyance to schoiars eyer since, for, at intervals or teW years, some guileless victim or des.en- ing impostor appears With discovery which makes a momentary sehsatton, until the fact is elicited that the mattetr is already well known to those who nave ma de a study of these antiques.
 The plous deception of the monks, now ever. are not to be classed with the ma lieious hoaxes that are Somet mes pFdc- ticed upon unSuSpecting and unlhIorileu editors and sometimes by unsorupulous newspapers, upon an innocent and gull lible public. There have been several very famous hoaxes perpetrated in the history of the American press, the pest l1aoWn of sT, as well as the most success ful. being the moon hoax, which was O deliberate fabrication In the New York Sun office In September, 1895.
 '@rhe moon hoax-so called, of course after it's bogus nature had been dlscoY- ered-onened with an account of how Sir John Herschel, with Sir David Brew ster's assistance, had invented an ap- paratus, minutely descr.hed lhy which the magnifying power of an immense teie- scope could be sufficiently increased to detect minute objects in the moon.
 ''Sir John had been sent out 10 the Capo of Good Hope at the expense of the Eng- fish, French and Austrian governments, sa i'd the writer ''Whether the British government was skeptical concerning the promised splendor of the discoveries, or wished them to be scrupulously yelled until they had accumulated a full-onbed glory for the nation and reign in which they originated, is a question which we can only conjecturally solve. But cer- tain 1t Is that the astronomers royal pa- irons enjoined Masonic taciturnity upon him and his friends until he should have officially communicated the results of his great experiment. This is an ex- plantation of the circumstance that noth- ing had before been heard regarding the gigantic instrument taken out by Her schel That he was actually at that time at the Cape of Good Hope was gen. erally known
 "On the night of January 10 1885, the telescope was ready to be employed upon the moon. The first things observed were basaltic rocks covered with pop pies; then fields, trees and rivers; then amethyst mountains and verdant val leys; then animals like bisons a unicorn goat, pelioans and sheep All these things were described with a gorgeous lures were seen to light upon a plain. something between a human being and an ouf1ng-outang in appearance, with wings like those of bat These beings were at once christened the Vespert'llo- homo. or Batman. They were doubt7 some of their ways were unpublishably singular, and were reserved for a scien- tiffc book by Herschel Meanwhile sev- eral ministers ,on a promise of tempor- ary secrecy, were allowed apeep at these things which were unfit for the laity.
 "Such was the substance of narra- tive which astonished all America. Many were deceived many were only per plexed. Poe himself wrote an examina- ton of it's claims to credit, showing dis tinctly it's fictitious character. but was astonished at finding that he could ob- tain few listeners. So really eager were all 10 be deceived, so magical were the charms of a style that served as the We- hicle of an exceedingly clumsy inven- ton. Not one person in ten discredited 1t. and. strangest point of all, the doubt CTS were chiefly those who doub ed with out being able to say why-the ignorant those uninformed in astronomy-people who would not believe because the thing was so novel, so entirely out of the usual way"
 This most successful of all frauds was a deliberate invention designed by the editor of the Sun to call attention to the paper, make a sensa ton, and thus give the journal then recently started. a prominence in the newspaper world. The authorship of the hoax is attributed to MT. R. A. Locke but is now disputed, for Prof. De Morgan claims that 1t was the work of Ncollet, a French astronomer at that time fugitive from his native coun-