Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/133

Rh mentions not a trace of sulphur. Of course our weakness, or impositiveness, lies in that, by any one to whom it would be agreeable to find sulphur in this thing, sulphur would be found in it—by our own intermediatism there is some sulphur in everything, or sulphur is only a localization or emphasis of something that, unemphasized, is in all things.

So there have, or haven't, been found upon this earth, things that fell from the sky, or that were left behind by extra-mundane visitors to this earth

A yarn in the London Times, June 22, 1844: that some workmen, quarrying rock, close to the Tweed, about a quarter of a mile below Rutherford Mills, discovered a gold thread embedded in the stone, at a depth of 8 feet: that a piece of the gold thread had been sent to the office of the Kelso Chronicle.

Pretty little thing; not at all frowsy; rather damnable.

London Times, Dec. 24, 1851:

That Hiram De Witt, of Springfield, Mass., returning from California, had brought with him a piece of auriferous quartz about the size of a man's fist. It was accidentally dropped—split open—nail in it. There was a cut-iron nail, size of a six-penny nail, slightly corroded. "It was entirely straight and had a perfect head."

Or—California—ages ago, when auriferous quartz was forming—super-carpenter, million of miles or so up in the air—drops a nail.

To one not an intermediatist, it would seem incredible that this datum, not only of the damned, but of the lowest of the damned, or of the journalistic caste of the accursed, could merge away with something else damned only by disregard, and backed by what is called "highest scientific authority"

Communication by Sir David Brewster (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1845-51):

That a nail had been found in a block of stone, from Kingoodie Quarry, North Britain. The block in which the nail was found was nine inches thick, but as to what part of the quarry it had come from, there is no evidence—except that it could not have been from the surface. The quarry had been worked about twenty years. It consisted of alternate layers of hard stone and a substance called "till." The point of the nail, quite eaten with rust, projected into some "till," upon the surface of the block of stone. The rest of the