Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “A Moving Chapter (Part I),” Philadelphia
Public Ledger, July 17, 1844   A MOVING CHAPTER . — The Omnibus
may be defined as a moveable house of public entertainment on
strictly temperance principles, and four wheels. The word
Omnibus is derived, or rather taken bodily from the Latin; and
in view of that fact, we have made a painfully severe inquiry
into the locomotive habits of the Romans, to find if they had
the omnibus. But after profound researches, which would not have
dishonored the industry of Niebuhr himself, we arrived at no
satisfactory conclusion. So we must leave that an open question
for the antiquarian clubs. In modern times the discovery of the
omnibus dates after that of the steamboat, and before that of
the magnetic telegraph. All three are united in a great cause,
either the rapid conveyance of persons or ideas; the two first,
however, frequently carrying persons without ideas, and the last
being strictly confined, thus far, to carrying ideas without
persons. But we are