Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/149

Rh The means of exclusion would probably be—men digging a hole—no one else looking: one of them drops a coin into the hole—as to where he got a strange coin, remarkable in shape even—that's disregarded. Up comes the coin—expressions of astonishment from the evil one who had dropped it.

However the antiquarians have missed this coin. I can find no other mention of it.

Another coin. Also a little study in the genesis of a prophet.

In the American Antiquarian, 16-313, is copied a story by a correspondent to the Detroit News, of a copper coin about the size of a two-cent piece, said to have been found in a Michigan mound. The Editor says merely that he does not endorse the find. Upon this slender basis, he buds out, in the next number of the Antiquarian:

"The coin turns out, as we predicted, to be a fraud."

You can imagine the scorn of Elijah, or any of the old more nearly real prophets.

Or all things are tried by the only kind of jurisprudence we have in quasi-existence:

Presumed to be innocent until convicted—but they're guilty.

The Editor's reasoning is as phantom-like as my own, or St. Paul's, or Darwin's. The coin is condemned because it came from the same region from which, a few years before, had come pottery that had been called fraudulent. The pottery had been condemned because it was condemnable.

Scientifc American, June 17, 1882:

That a farmer, in Cass Co., Ill., had picked up, on his farm, a bronze coin, which was sent to Prof. F. F. Hilder, of St. Louis, who identified it as a coin of Antiochus IV. Inscription said to be in ancient Greek characters: translated as "King Antiochus Epiphanes (Illustrious) the Victorious." Sounds quite definite and convincing—but we have some more translations coming.

In the American Pioneer, 2-169, are shown two faces of a copper coin, with characters very much like those upon the Grave Creek stone—which, with translations, we'll take up soon. This coin is said to have been found in Connecticut, in 1843.

"Records of the Past," 12-182:

That, early in 1913, a coin, said to be a Roman coin, was reported as discovered in an Illinois mound. It was sent to Dr. Emerson, of the Art Institute, of Chicago. His opinion was that the coin is "of the rare mintage of Domitius Domitianus, Emperor