Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/215

Rh a procession, or migration, except that some of the bodies were more elongated—or lean and hungry—than globular.

He might have argued for sixty-five years. He'd have impressed nobody—of importance. The super-motif, or dominant, of his era, was Exclusionism, and the notion of seeds in the air assimilates—with due disregards—with that dominant.

Or pageantries here upon our earth, and things looking down upon us—and the Crusades were only dust clouds, and glints of the sun on shining armor were only particles of mica in dust clouds. I think it was a Crusade that Read saw—but that it was right, relatively to the year 1851, to say that it was only seeds in the wind, whether the wind blew from the sea or not. I think of things that were luminous with religious zeal, mixed up, like everything else in Intermediateness, with black marauders and from gray to brown beings of little personal ambitions. There may have been a Richard Cœur de Lion, on his way to right wrongs in Jupiter. It was right, relatively to 1851, to say that he was a seed of a cabbage.

Prof. Coffin, U. S. N. (Jour. Frank. Inst., 88-151):

That, during the eclipse of Aug., 1869, he had noted the passage, across his telescope, of several bright flakes resembling thistle-blows, floating in the sunlight. But the telescope was so focussed that, if these things were distinct, they must have been so far away from this earth that the difficulties of orthodoxy remain as great, one way or another, no matter what we think they were

They were "well-defined," says Prof. Coffin.

Henry Waldner (Nature, 5-304):

That, April 27, 1863, he had seen great numbers of small, shining bodies passing from west to east. He had notified Dr. Wolf, of the Observatory of Zurich, who "had convinced himself of this strange phenomenon." Dr. Wolf had told him that similar bodies had been seen by Sig. Capocci, of the Capodimonte Observatory, at Naples, May 11, 1845.

The shapes were of great diversity—or different aspects of similar shapes?

Appendages were seen upon some of them.

We are told that some were star-shaped, with transparent appendages.

I think, myself, it was a Mohammed and his Hegira. May have been only his harem. Astonishing sensation: afloat in space with ten millon wives around one. Anyway, it would seem that we