1.      Hidden in Plain Sight

 In The Purloined Letter, I hid a letter in plain sight of the police.   Despite numerous, exhaustive, searches of the thief’s apartment, the police failed to find the object of their search.  Why?  Because I showed them what they wanted to see by i.) offering many possible hiding places and ii.) leaving the desired letter, albeit with alterations disguising it’s original appearance, right under their noses.  Since the police, by training and experience, were conditioned to search in hidden locations, they ignored the disguised letter placed in plain sight.

It may be that I have hidden the solution to The Beale Papers in plain sight.  Perhaps the ciphers are merely bait for the unwary, who can say?

2.      Acrostics and Other Secret Messages

Can you find my valentine in this poem?

For her these lines are penned, whose luminous eyes,

                  Brightly expressive as the twins of Loeda,

      Shall find her own sweet name that, nestling, lies

                  Upon this page, enwrapped from every reader.

      Search narrowly this rhyme, which holds a treasure

                  Divine – a talisman—an amulet

      That must be worn at heart.  Search well the measure;

                  The words – the letters themselves.  Do not forget

      The trvialest point, or you may lose your labor.

                  And yet there is in this no Gordian knot

      Which one might not undo without a sabre,

                  If one could merely understand the plot.

      Enwritten upon this page whereon are peering

                  Such eager eyes, there lies, I say, perdu

      A well-known name, oft uttered in the hearing

                  Of poets, by poets; as the name is a poet’s, too.

      Its letters, although naturally lying –

Like the knight Pinto (Mendez Ferdinando) –

Still form a synonym for truth.  Cease trying!

            You will not read the riddle though you do the best you can do.

 

      Frances Sargent Osgood was my valentine.  Beginning with the first line of the poem, select the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, etc. to spell Frances Sargent Osgood.

     Finding an acrostic, The Beale Papers or Thomas J. Beale, for example, in one of my writings would create quite a stir in the world of literature.  Such a find would go a long toward proving my authorship of The Beale Papers.  Sometimes I could not resist leaving these little hints, it may be worth the effort to search for such a clue.

 

3.      Eureka

 

It is hard to ignore a book entitled Eureka, when searching for a buried literary treasure.  This essay on “the material and spiritual universe” was, at least on the surface, a treatise on “the physical, metaphysical and mathematical…universe: of its essence, its origins, its creation, and its present condition and its destiny.”  The essay, about two hundred pages long, was not well received during my time.  Although some have credited me with predicting the big bang theory and the existence of black holes, most have ignored this work since my death.

Eureka may be fertile hunting ground for Beale researchers.  In the first place, the name eureka and the discovery of gold are closely linked.  Secondly, because this essay has been reviewed as a scientific study, it has never, to my knowledge, been analyzed for the symbolic, below the surface messages that are present in the majority of my work.  At first glance such a review would not be necessary as this is not a work of fiction.  Perhaps this is a mistake.  Finally, I recommend a close examination of the preface of Eureka, my message here may indicate the existence of a hidden poem.

 

PREFACE

To the few who love me and whom I love—to those who feel rather than to those who think—to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities—I offer this Book of Truths, not in the character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it true.  To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:--let us say as a Romance; or, if I be not urging to lofty a claim, as a Poem.

 

      What I here propound is true:--therefore it cannot die: --or if by any means it be trodden down so that it die, it will “rise again to the Life Everlasting.”

      Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead.

                                                                                          --E.A.P.          

 

                Could it be that I have hidden a great poem in this scientific treatise?  True, an essay on the cosmos can be an Art-Product, a Romance, a thing of beauty in its own right.  But a poem, especially a great poem such as The Raven, is a much better forum for expressing beauty and romance.  What lies beneath the surface?