A peculiar comedy set in the heart of the Brutish Empire and the uncivil belly of Merika of the 1860's. This bumpy tale of a twisted aristocrat who is conducting sovereign-sanctioned ergot experiments on his entourage, who in turn are controlled by dark and fatuous forces. Dickens meets Jules Verne in Dada soaked Victoriana.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

I don't believe a word of it! cried the Master Builder, with some heat of manner. "It is just an old scare, the like of which I have heard a hundred times ere now. Some poor wretch dies of the sweating sickness, or, at worst, of the spotted fever, and in