 12. Astronomy and a watchman looking at half a dozen Lanterns. There are gas lights and kerosene lamps and electric lights in the neighborhood, matches flaring, fires in stoves, bonfires, house of fire somewhere, lights of automobiles, illuminated signs, the watchman and his one little system, ethics. And some young ladies and the dear old professor of a very select seminary, drugs and divorce and rape, venereal diseases, drunkenness, murder, excluded. The prim and the precise, or the exact, the homogeneous, the single, the puritanic, the mathematic, the pure, the perfect. We can have illusion of this state, but only by disregarding its infinite denials. It's a drop of milk, a float in acid that's eating it. The positive swamped by the negative. So it is in intermediateness, where only to be positive is to generate corresponding and perhaps equal negativeness. In our acceptance it is, in quasi-existence, premonitory or prenatal or pre-awakening consciousness of a real existence. But this consciousness of realness is the greatest resistance to efforts to realize or to become real, because it is feeling that realness has been attained. Our antagonism is not to science, but to the attitude of the sciences that they have finally realized, or to belief instead of acceptance to the insufficiency, which, as we have seen over and over, amounts to paltryness and purity of scientific dogmas and standards. Or if several persons start out to Chicago and get to Buffalo, and one be under the delusion that Buffalo is Chicago, that one will be a resistance to the progress of the others. So astronomy and its seemingly exact little system. But data we shall have of round worlds and spindle-shaped worlds and worlds shaped like a wheel. Worlds like Titanic pruning hooks, worlds linked together by streaming filaments, solitary worlds and worlds in hordes, tremendous worlds and tiny worlds, some of them made of material, like the material of this earth, and worlds that are geometric, super-constructions made of iron and steel. Or not only fall from the sky of ashes and cinders and coke and charcoal and oily substances that suggest fuel, but the masses of iron that have fallen upon this earth. Wrecks and flotsam and fragments of vast iron constructions. Or steel. Sooner or later we shall have to take up an expression that fragments of steel have fallen from the sky. If fragments not of iron, but of steel have fallen upon this earth. But what would a deep-sea fish learn even if a steel plate of a wrecked vessel above him should drop and bump him on the nose? Our submergence in a sea of conventionality of almost impenetrable density. Sometimes I'm a savage who has found something on the beach of his island. Sometimes I'm a deep-sea fish with a sore nose. The greatest of mysteries. Why don't they ever come here or send here openly? Of course, there's nothing to that mystery if we don't take so seriously the notion that we must be interesting. It's probably for moral reasons that they stay away, but even so there must be some degraded ones among them. Or physical reasons. When we can specially take up that subject, one of our leading ideas, or credulities, will be that near approach by another world to this world would be catastrophic. That navigable worlds would avoid proximity. That others that have survived have organized into protective remotenesses. Or orbits which approximate to regularity. Though by no means to the degree of popular supposition. But the persistence of the notion that we must be interesting. Bugs and germs and things like that, they're interesting to us. Some of them are too interesting. Dangers of near approach. Nevertheless, our own ships that dare not venture close to a rocky shore can send rowboats ashore. Why not diplomatic relations established between the United States and Cycloria? Which in our advanced astronomy is the name of a remarkable wheel shaped world or super construction. Why not missionaries sent here openly to convert us from our barbarous prohibitions and other taboos. And to prepare the way for a good trade in ultra-bibles and super-whiskies. Fortunes made in selling us cast-off super-finaries. Which we'd take to like an African chief to someone's old silk hat from New York or London. The answer that occurs to me is so simple that it seems immediately acceptable. If we accept that the obvious is the solution of all problems. Or if most of our perplexities consist in laboriously and painfully conceiving of the unanswerable. And then looking for answers using such words as obvious and solution conventionally. Or would we if we could educate and sophisticate pigs, geese, cattle. Would it be wise to establish diplomatic relations with the hen that now functions. Satisfied with mere sense of achievement by way of compensation. I think we're property. I should say we belong to something. That once upon a time this earth was no man's land. That other worlds explored and colonized here and fought among themselves for possessions. But that now it's owned by something. That something owns this earth. All others warned off. Nothing in our own times, perhaps, because I am thinking of certain notes I have, has ever appeared upon this earth from somewhere else. So openly as Columbus landed upon San Salvador. Or as Hudson sailed up his river. But as to surreptitious visits to this earth in recent times. Or as to emissaries, perhaps from other worlds. Or voyagers who have shown every indication of intent to evade and avoid. We shall have data as convincing as our data of oil or coal burning aerial super constructions. But in this vast subject I shall have to do considerable neglecting or disregarding myself. I don't see how I can in this book take up at all the subject of possible use of humanity to some other mode of existence or the flattering notion that we can possibly be worth something. Pigs, geese, and cattle. First find out that they are owned. Then find out the whineness of it. I suspect that after all we are useful. That among contesting claimants adjustment has occurred or that something now has a legal right to us by force or by having paid out analogues of beads for us to former more primitive owners of us. All others warned off that all this has been known perhaps for ages to certain ones upon this earth. A cult or order, members of which function like bellwethers to the rest of us. Or as superior slaves or overseers directing us in accordance with instructions received from somewhere else in our mysterious usefulness. But I accept that in the past before proprietorship was established inhabitants of a host of other worlds have dropped here, hopped here, tested, sailed, flown, motored, walked here for all I know, been pulled here, been pushed, have come singly, have come in enormous numbers, have visited occasionally, have visited periodically for hunting, trading, replenishing harems, mining, have been unable to stay here, established colonies here have been lost here far advanced peoples or things and primitive peoples or whatever they were, white ones, black ones, yellow ones. I have a very convincing datum that the ancient Britons were the blue ones. Of course we are told by conventional anthropologists that they only painted themselves blue. But in our own advanced anthropology they were veritable blue ones. Anals of philosophy, 1451. Note of a blue child born in England. That's Atavism. Giants and fairies. We accept them of course or if we pride ourselves upon being awfully far advanced I don't know how to sustain our conceit except by very largely going far back. Science of today, the superstition of tomorrow. Science of tomorrow, the superstition of today. Notice of a stone ax 17 inches long, 9 inches across, broad end. Proceedings, society of antiquities of Scotland. 1, 9, 184. American antiquarian, 1860. Copper ax from an Ohio mound, 22 inches long, weight 38 pounds. American anthropologist, NS, 8229. Stone ax found at Birchwood, Wisconsin exhibited in the collection of the Missouri Historical Society found with the pointed end embedded in the soil. For all I know may have dropped there. 28 inches long, 14 wide, 11 thick, weight 300 pounds. Or the footprints in Sandstone near Carson, Nevada, each print 18 to 20 inches long. American Journal of Science, 326139. These footprints are very clear and well defined reproduction of them in the journal but they assimilate with the system like sour apples to other systems. So Professor Marsh, a loyal and unscrupulous systematist argues, quote, the size of these footprints and especially the width between the right and left series are strong evidence that they were not made by men as has been so generally supposed, end quote. So these excluders, stranglers of Minerva, desperados of disregard, above all or below all the anthropologists. I'm inspired with a new insult, someone offends me. I wish to express almost absolute contempt for him. He's a systematistic anthropologist. Simply to read something of this kind is not so impressive as to see for one's self if anyone will take the trouble to look up these footprints as pictured in the journal. He will either agree with Professor Marsh or feel that to deny them is to indicate a mind as profoundly enslaved by a system as was ever the humble intellect of a medieval monk. The reasoning of this representative phantom of the chosen or of the special appearances who sit in judgment or condemnation upon us of the more nearly real. That there never were giants upon this earth because gigantic footprints are more gigantic than prints made by men who are not giants. We think of giants as occasional visitors to this earth. Of course, Stonehenge for instance. It may be that as time goes on we shall have to admit that there are remains of many tremendous habitations of giants upon this earth and that their appearances here were more than casual but their bones or the absence of their bones accept that no matter how cheerful and unsuspicious my disposition may be when I go to the American Museum of Natural History dark cynicism arise the moment I come to the fossils or old bones that have been found upon this earth. Gigantic things that have been reconstructed into terrifying but proper dinosaurs. But my own cheerfulness, the dodo did it. On one of the floors below the fossils they have a reconstructed dodo. It's frankly a fiction, it's labeled as such but it's been reconstructed so cleverly and so convincingly Fairies Fairy Crosses Harper's Weekly 5715 That near the point where the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains unite north of Patrick County, Virginia many little stone crosses have been found. A race of tiny beings. They crucified cockroaches. Exquisite beings but the cruelty of the exquisite. In their diminutive way they were human beings. They crucified. The fairy crosses we are told in Harper's Weekly range in weight from one quarter of an ounce to an ounce but it is said in the Scientific American that some of them are no larger than the head of a pin. They've been found in two other states but all in Virginia are strictly localized on and along Bull Mountain. We are reminded of the Chinese seals in Ireland. I suppose they fell there. Some are Roman crosses, some St. Andrews, some Maltese. This time we are spared contact with the anthropologists and have geologists instead. But I am afraid that the relief to our finer or more nearly real sensibilities will not be very great. The geologists were called upon to explain the fairy crosses. Their response was the usual scientific tropism. Geologists say that they are crystals. The writer in Harper's Weekly points out that this holds up or this anesthetic if theoretic science be little but attempt to assuage pangs of the unexplained fails to account for the localized distributions of these objects which makes me think of both aggregation and separation at the bottom of the sea. If from a wrecked ship similar objects should fall in large numbers but at different times. But some are Roman crosses, some St. Andrews, some Maltese. Conceivably there might be a mineral that would have a diversity of geometric forms at the same time restricted to some expression of the cross because snowflakes for instance have diversity but restriction to the hexagon. But the guilty geologists, cold-blooded as astronomers and chemists and all the other deep-sea fishes though less profoundly of the pseudo-saved than the wretched anthropologists disregarded the very datum that it was wise to disregard. That the fairy crosses are not all made of the same material. It's the same old disregard or it's the same old psychotropism or process of assimilation. Crystals are geometric forms. Crystals are included in the system. But then fairy crosses are crystals but that different mineral should in a few different regions be inspired to turn into different forms of the cross is the kind of resistance that we call less nearly real than our own acceptances. We now come to some cursed little things that are of the lost but for the salvation of which scientific missionaries have done their damnedest. Pygmy flints. They can't very well be denied. They're lost and well known. Pygmy flints are tiny prehistoric implements. Some of them are a quarter of an inch in size. England, India, France, South Africa they've been found in many parts of the world whether showered there or not. They belong high up in the froth of the accursed. They are not denied and they've not been disregarded. There's an abundant literature upon this subject. One attempt to rationalize them or assimilate them or take them into the scientific fold has been the notion that they were toys of prehistoric children. It sounds reasonable but of course by the reasonable we mean that for which the equally reasonable but opposing has not been found out. Except that we modify that by saying that though nothing is finally reasonable some phenomena have higher approximations to reasonableness than have others. Against the notion of toys the higher approximation is that where pygmy flints are found all flints are pygmies. At least so in India where when larger implements have been found in the same place there are separations by strata, Wilson. The datum that just at present leads me to accept that these flints were made by beings about the size of pickles is a point brought about by Professor Wilson. This is in the report of the National Museum, 1892, 455. Not only that the flints are tiny but that the chipping upon them is minute. Struggle for expression in the mind of a 19th centuryite of an idea that did not belong to his era. In Science Gossip, 1896, 36 R. A. Gaulty says So fine is the chipping to see the workmanship of magnifying glasses necessary. I think that would be absolutely convincing if there were anything, absolutely anything either that tiny beings from pickle to cucumber stature made these things or that ordinary savages made them under magnifying glasses. The idea that we are now going to develop or perpetrate is rather intensely of the accursed or the advanced. It's a lost soul, I admit, or boast, but it fits in. Or, as conventional as ever, our own method is the scientific method of assimilating. It assimilates if we think of the inhabitants of Elvera. By the way, I forgot to tell the name of the giant's world. Monstrator. Spindle-shaped world about 100,000 miles along its major axis. More details to be published later. But our coming inspiration fits in if we think of the inhabitants of Elvera as having only visited here, having in hordes as dense as clouds of bats come here upon hunting excursions. For mice, I should say, for bees very likely, or most likely of all, or inevitably, to convert the heathen here, horrified with anyone who would gorge himself with more than a bean at a time, fearful for the souls of beings who would guzzle more than a dew-drop at a time. Hordes of tiny missionaries determined that right should prevail, determining right by their own minutenesses. They must have been missionaries. Only to be is motion to convert or assimilate something else. The idea now is that tiny creatures coming here from their own little world, which may be Eros, though I call it Elvera, would flip from the exquisite to the enormous, gulp of a fair-sized terrestrial animal, half a dozen of them gone and soon digested. One falls into a brook, torn away in a mighty torrent. Or never anything but conventional, we adopt from Darwin. Quote, the geological records are incomplete. End quote. Their flints would survive, but as to their fragile bodies, one might as well search for prehistoric frost traceries. A little whirlwind, Elevarian, carried away a hundred yards, a body never found by his companions. They'd mourn for the departed, conventional emotion to have. They'd mourn. There'd have to be a funeral. There's no getting away from funerals. So I adopt an explanation that I take from the anthropologists. Burial and effigy. Perhaps the Elvarians would not come to this earth again until many years later, another distressing occurrence. One little mausoleum for all burials and effigy. London Times, July 20, 1836. That, early in July 1836, some boys were searching for rabbits burrows in the rocky formations near Edinburgh, known as Arthur's Seat. In the side of a cliff, they came upon some thin sheets of slate which they pulled out. Little cave. Seventeen tiny coffins. Three or four inches long. In the coffins were miniature wooden figures. They were dressed differently, both in style and material. There were two tiers of eight coffins each, and a third tier begun with one coffin. The extraordinary datum, which has especially made mystery here, that the coffins had been deposited singly in the little cave and at intervals of many years. In the first tier the coffins were quite decayed, and the wrappings had moldered away. In the second tier the effects of age had not advanced so far, and the top coffin was quite recent looking. In the proceedings of the society of antiquarians of Scotland, 3, 12, 460, there is a full account of this find. Three of the coffins and three of the figures are pictured. So Alvara, with its downy forests and its microscopic oyster shells, and if the Alvarians be not very far advanced, they take baths with sponges the size of pinheads. Or that catastrophes have occurred that fragments of Alvara have fallen to this earth. In popular science, 2083, Francis Bingham, writing of the corals and sponges and shells and crinoids that Dr. Hahn had asserted that he had found in meteorites, says, judging by the photographs of them, that their notable peculiarity is their extreme smallness. The corals, for instance, are about one-twentieth the size of terrestrial corals. They represent a veritable pygmy animal world, says Bingham. The inhabitants of Mondstrator and Alvara were primitives, I think, at the time of their occasional visits to this earth, though, of course, in a quasi-existence, anything that we semi-fantoms call evidence of anything may be just as good evidence of anything else. Logicians and detectives and jurymen and suspicious wives and members of the Royal Astronomic Society recognize this indeterminateness, but have the delusion that in the method of agreement there is final or real evidence. The method is good enough for an existence that is only semi-real, but also it is the method of reasoning by which witches were burned and by which ghosts have been feared. I'd not like to be so unadvanced as to deny witches and ghosts, but I do think that there never have been witches and ghosts like those of popular supposition. But stories of them have been supported by astonishing fabrications of details and of different accounts in agreement. So if a giant left impressions of his bare feet in the ground, that is not to say that he was a primitive bulk of culture out taking the knife cure. So if Stonehenge is a large but only roughly geometric construction, the inattention to details by its builders signifies anything you please, ambitious dwarfs or giants, if giants that they were little more than cavemen or they were post-impressionist architects from a very far-advanced civilization. If there are other worlds, there are tutelary worlds, or that Kepler, for instance, could not have been absolutely wrong, that his notion of an angel assigned to push along and guide each planet may not be very acceptable, but that abstractedly, or in the notion of a tutelary relation, we may find acceptance. Only to be is to be tutelary. Our general expression that everything in intermediateness is not a thing, but is an endeavor to become something by breaking away from its continuity or merging away with all other phenomena is an attempt to break away from the very essence of a relative existence and become absolute, if it have not surrendered to or become part of some higher attempt. That to this process there are two aspects. Attraction, or the spirit of everything to assimilate all other things, if it have not given in and subordinated to or have not been assimilated by some higher attempted system, unity, organization, entity, harmony, equilibrium, and repulsion, or the attempt of everything to exclude or disregard the unassimilable. Universality of the process. Anything conceivable. A tree, it is doing all it can to assimilate substances of the soil and substances of the air and sunshine too into tree substance. Oversely, it is rejecting or excluding or disregarding that which it cannot assimilate. No grazing, pig roosting, tiger stalking, planets trying or acting to capture comments, rag pickers and the Christian religion, and a cat down head first in a garbage can, nations fighting for more territory, sciences correlating the data they can, trust magnets organizing, chorus girl out for a little late supper. All of them stopped somewhere by the unassimilable. Chorus girl in the broiled lobster, if she eats, not shell, and all she represents, universal failure to positive eyes. Also, if she does, she represents universal failure to positive, to positive eyes her ensuing disorders will translate her to the negative absolute. Or science and some of our cursed hard shell data. One speaks of the tutelarian as if it were something distinct in itself. So one speaks of a tree, a saint, a barrel of pork, the Rocky Mountains. One speaks of missionaries as if they were positively different. Or had identity of their own. Or were a species by themselves. To the intermediatist, everything that seems to have identity is only attempted identity. And every species is continuous with all other species. Or that which is called the specific is only emphasis upon some aspect of the general. If there are cats, there are only emphasis upon universal felinity. There is nothing that does not partake of that of which the missionary or the tutelary is the special. Every conversation is a conflict of missionaries, each trying to convert the other, to assimilate or to make the other similar to himself. If no progress be made, mutual repulsion will follow. If other worlds have ever in the past had relations with this earth, they were attempted positivizations to extend themselves by colonies upon this earth to convert or assimilate indigenous inhabitants of this earth. Or parent worlds and their colonies here. Super Romanimus. Or where the first Romans came from. It's as good as the Romulus and Remus story. Super Israelimus. Or that despite modern reasoning upon this subject there was once something that was super parental or tutelary to early Orientals. Azuria. Which was tutelary to the early Britons. Azuria whence came the blue Britons whose descendants gradually diluting, like bluing, in a wash tub where a faucets turned on have been most emphasized of sub-tutelarians or assimilations ever since. Worlds that were once tutelarian worlds before this earth became sole property of one of them. Their attempts to convert or assimilate but then the state that comes to all things in their missionary frustrations. Unexceptance by all stomachs of some things. Rejection by all societies of some units. Glaciers that sort over and cast out stones. Repulsion. Wrath of the baffled missionary. There is no other wrath. All repulsion is reaction to the unassimilable. So then the wrath of Azuria. Because surrounding peoples of this earth would not assimilate with her own colonists in the part of the earth that we now call England. I don't know that there has ever been more nearly just reasonable or logical wrath in this earth's history if there is no other wrath. The wrath of Azuria because the other peoples of this earth would not turn blue to suit her. History is a department of human delusion that interests us. We are able to give a little advancement to history. In the vitrified forts of a few parts of Europe we find data that the Humes and Gibbons have disregarded. The vitrified forts surrounding England but not in England. The vitrified forts of Scotland, Ireland, Brittany and Bohemia. Or that once upon a time with electric blasts Azuria tried to swipe the earth clear of the peoples who resisted her. The vast blue bulk of Azuria appeared in the sky. Clouds turned green. The sun was formless and purple in the vibrations of wrath that were emanating from Azuria. The whitish or yellowish or brownish peoples of Scotland, Ireland, Brittany and Bohemia fled to hilltops and built forts. In a real existence hilltops or easiest accessibility to an aerial enemy would be the last choice in refuges. But here in quasi-existence if we're accustomed to run to hilltops in times of danger we run to them just the same even with danger closest to hilltops. Very common in quasi-existence attempt to escape by running closer to the pursuing. They built forts or already had forts on hilltops. Something poured electricity upon them. The stones of these forts exist to this day vitrified or melted and turned to glass. The archaeologists have jumped from one conclusion to another like the rapid chamois we read of a while ago to account for vitrified forts always restricted by the commandment that unless their conclusions conformed to such tenets as exclusionism of the system they would be excommunicated. So archaeologists in their medieval dread of excommunication have tried to explain vitrified forts in terms of terrestrial experience. We find in their insufficiencies the same old assimilating of all that could be assimilated and disregard for the unassimilable conventionalizing into the explanation that vitrified forts were made by prehistoric peoples who built vast fires often remote from wood supply to melt externally and to cement together the stones of their constructions. But negativeness always so within itself a science can never be homogeneous or unified or harmonious. So Miss Russell in the Journal of the BAA has pointed out that it is seldom that single stones to say nothing of long walls of large houses that are burned to the ground are vitrified. If we pay a little attention to this subject ourselves before starting to write upon it which is one of the ways of being more nearly real than oppositions so far encountered by us we find that the stones of these forts are vitrified in no reference to cementing them. They're cemented here and there in streaks as if special blasts had struck or played upon them. Then one thinks of lightning. Once upon a time something melted in streaks the stones of forts on the tops of hills in Scotland, Ireland, Brittany and Bohemia. Lightning selects the isolated and conspicuous. But some of the vitrified forts are not on top of hills. Some are very inconspicuous. Their walls too are vitrified in streaks. Something once had effect similar to lightning upon forts, mostly on hills in Scotland, Ireland, Brittany and Bohemia. But upon hills all over the rest of the world are remains of forts that are not vitrified. There is only one crime in the local sense and that is not to turn blue if the gods are blue. But in the universal sense the one crime is not to turn the gods themselves green if you're green. Recording by Patrick McAfee Chicago G-I-S Dot DePaul Dot-E-D-U Slash P. McAfee Chapter 13 of The Book of the Damned This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Patrick McAfee The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort Chapter 13 One of the most extraordinary of phenomena or alleged phenomena of psychic research or alleged research if in quasi-existence there never has been real research but only approximations to research that merge away or that are continuous with prejudice and convenience. Stone throwing It's attributed to poltergeists their mischievous spirits. Poltergeists do not assimilate with our own present quasi-system which is an attempt to correlate denied or disregarded data as phenomena of extra-telluric forces expressed in physical terms. For I regard poltergeists as evil or false or discordant or absurd names that we give to various degrees or aspects of the unassimilable or that which resists attempts to organize, harmonize, systematize, or in short to positivize names that we give to our recognitions of the negative state. I don't care to deny poltergeists because I suspect that later when we're more enlightened or when we widen the range of our credulities or take on more of that increase of ignorance that is called knowledge, poltergeists may become assimilable. Then they'll be as reasonable as trees. By reasonableness I mean that which assimilates with a dominant force or system or a major body which is itself of course hypnosis and delusion developing however in our acceptance to higher and higher approximations to realness. The poltergeists are now evil or absurd to me proportionately to their present unassimilableness. Compounded however with the factor of their possible future assimilableness. We lug in the poltergeists because some of our own data or alleged data merge away indistinguishably with data or alleged data of them. Instances of stones that have been thrown or that have fallen upon a small area from an unseen and undetectable source. London Times April 27th 1872 From four o'clock Thursday afternoon until half past eleven Thursday night the houses 56 and 58 River D. Road Bermond Sea were assailed with stones and other missiles coming from an unseen quarter. Two children were injured every window broken and several articles of furniture were destroyed. Although there was a strong body of policemen gathered in the neighborhood they could not trace the direction whence the stones were thrown. Other missiles makes a complication here. But if the expression means tin cans and old shoes and if we accept that the direction could not be traced because it never occurred to anyone to look upward why we've lost a good deal of our provincialism by this time. London Times September 16th, 1841 That in the home of Mrs. Charton at Sutton Courthouse Sutton Lane, Chiswick windows had been broken by some unseen agent. Every attempt to detect the perpetrator failed. The mansion was detached and surrounded by high walls. No other building was near it. The police were called. Two constables assisted by members of the household guarded the house. But the windows were broken both in front and behind the house. Or the floating islands that are often stationary in the Super Sargasso Sea and atmospheric disturbances that sometimes affect them and bring things down within small areas upon this earth from temporarily stationary sources. Super Sargasso Sea and the beaches of its floating islands or at least accept pebbles have fallen Wolverhampton, England June 1860 Violent storm Fall of so many little black pebbles that they were cleared away by shoveling La Sae Poortoo 5264 Great number of small black stones that fell at Birmingham, England August 1858 Violent storm said to be similar to some basalt, a few leagues from Birmingham Report Brit Association 1864 37 Pebbles described as common water-worn pebbles that fell at Palestine, Texas July 6, 1888 of a formation not found near Palestine W. H. Perry Sergeant, Signal Corps Monthly Weather Review July 1888 Round smooth pebbles at Condahore 1834 American Journal Science 126 161 A number of stones of peculiar formation and shapes unknown in this neighborhood fell at Hillsboro, Illinois May 18, 1883 Monthly Weather Review May 1883 Pebbles from aerial beaches and terrestrial pebbles as products of whirlwinds so merge in these instances that, though it's interesting to hear of things of peculiar shape that have fallen from the sky it seems best to pay little attention here and to find phenomena of Sargasso Sea remote from the merger to this requirement we have three adaptations pebbles that fell where no whirlwind to which to attribute them could be learned of pebbles which fell in hail so large that incredibly could that hail have been formed in this earth's atmosphere pebbles which fell and were, long afterward, followed by more pebbles as if from some aerial stationary source in the same place in September 1898 there was a story in a New York newspaper of lightning or an appearance of luminosity in Jamaica something had struck a tree near the tree were found some small pebbles it was said that the pebbles had fallen from the sky with the lightning but the insult to orthodoxy was that they were not angular fragments such as might have been broken from a stony meteorite but they were water-worn pebbles in the geographical vagueness of a mainland the explanation up from one place and down in another is always good and is never overworked until the instances are masked as they are in this book but upon this occasion in the relatively small area of Jamaica there was no whirlwind findable however there in the first place bobs up monthly weather review August 1898 363 that the government meteorologist had investigated had reported that a tree had been struck by lightning and that small water-worn pebbles had been found near the tree but that similar pebbles could be found all over Jamaica monthly weather review September 1915 446 Professor Fassig gives an account of a fall of hail that occurred in Maryland June 22, 1915 hail stones the size of not at all uncommon an interesting but unconfirmed account stated that small pebbles were found at the center of some of the larger hail gathered at Annapolis the young man who related the story offered to produce the pebbles but has not done so a footnote since writing this the author states that he has received some of the pebbles when a young man uses pebbles that's as convincing as anything else I've ever heard of though no more convincing than if having told of ham sandwiches falling from the sky he should produce ham sandwiches if this reluctance be admitted by us we correlate it with a datum reported by a weather bureau observer signifying that whether the pebbles had been somewhere aloft a long time or not some of the hail stones that fell with them had been the datum is that some of these hail stones were composed of from 20 to 25 layers alternately of clear ice and snow ice in orthodox terms I argue that a fair sized hail stone falls from the clouds with velocity sufficient to warm it so that it would not take on even one layer of ice to put on 20 layers of ice I believe of something that had not fallen at all but had rolled somewhere at a leisurely rate for a long time we now have a commonplace datum that is familiar in two respects little symmetric objects of metal that fell at Orenburg Russia September 1824 philosophical magazine 48463 a second fall of these objects at Orenburg Russia January 25 1825 quarterly journal of the Royal Institute 1828 1447 I now think of the disc of Tarbus but when first I came upon these data I was impressed only with recurrences because the objects of Orenburg were described as crystals of pyrites or sulfate of iron I had no notion of metallic objects that might have been shaped or molded by means other than crystallization until I came to Aragos account of these occurrences Irvs 11 644 here the analysis gives 70% red oxide of iron and sulfur and lost by ignition 5% it seems to me acceptable that iron with considerably less than 5% sulfur in it is not iron pyrites then little rusty iron objects shaped by some other means have fallen 4 months apart at the same place Mr. Aragos expresses astonishment at this phenomenon of recurrence so familiar to us all together I find opening before us vistas of heresies to which I for one must shut my eyes I've always been in sympathy with the dogmatists and exclusionists that is plain in our opening lines that to be to seem to be is falsely and arbitrarily and dogmatically to exclude it is only the exclusionists who are good in the 19th century are evil in the 20th century constantly we feel emerging away into infinitude but that this book shall approximate to form or that our data shall approximate to organization or that we shall approximate to intelligibility we have to call ourselves back constantly from wandering off into infinitude the thing that we do however is to make our own outline or the difference between what we include and what we exclude vague the crux here and the limit beyond which we may not go very much is acceptance that there is a region that we call Sargasso C not yet fully accepted but a provisional position that has received a great deal of support but is it a part of this earth and does it revolve with and over this earth or does it flatly overlie this earth not revolving with and over this earth that this earth does not revolve and is not round or roundish at all but is continuous with the rest of its system so that if one could break away from the traditions of the geographers one might walk and walk and come to Mars and then find Mars continuous with Jupiter I suppose someday such queries will sound absurd the thing will be so obvious because it is very difficult for me to conceive of little metallic objects hanging precisely over a small town in Russia for four months if revolving unattached with a revolving earth it may be that something aimed at that town and then later took another shot these are speculations that seem to me to be evil relatively to these early years in the 20th century just now I accept that this earth is not round of course that is very old fashioned but roundish or at least that it has what is called form of its own and does revolve upon its axis and in an orbit around the sun I only accept these old traditional notions and that above it are regions of suspension that revolve with it from which fall objects by disturbances of various kinds and then later fall again in the same place monthly weather review May 1884 134 report from the signal service observer at Bismarck Dakota that at nine o'clock in the evening of May 22nd 1884 sharp sounds were heard throughout the city caused by a fall of flinty stones striking against windows 15 hours later another fall of flinty stones occurred at Bismarck there is no report of stones having fallen anywhere else this is a thing of the ultra-dammed all editors of scientific publications read the monthly weather review and frequently copy from it the noise made by the stones of Bismarck rattling against those windows may be in a language that aviators will someday interpret but it was a noise entirely surrounded by silences of this ultra-dammed thing there is no mention of it being findable by me in any other publication the size of some hailstones has worried many meteorologists but not textbook meteorologists I know of no more serene occupation than that of writing textbooks though writing for the war cry of the Salvation Army may be equally unadventurous in the drowsy tranquility of a textbook we easily and unintelligently read of dusk particles around which icy rain forms hailstones in their fall then increasing by accretion but in the meteorological journals we read often of air spaces nucleating hailstones but it's the size of the things dip a marble in icy water dip and dip and dip it if you're a resolute dipper you will after a while have an object the size of a baseball but I think a thing could fall from the moon in that length of time also the strata of them the Maryland hailstones are unusual but a dozen strata have often been counted Farrell gives an instance of 13 strata such considerations led professor Schwedhoff to argue that some hailstones are not and cannot be generated in this earth's atmosphere that they come from somewhere else now in a relative existence nothing can of itself be either attractive or repulsive its effects are functions of its associations or implications many of our data have been taken from very conservative scientific sources it was not until their discordant implications or irreconcilabilities with the system were perceived that excommunication was pronounced against them professor Schwedhoff's paper was read before the British Association report of 1882 page 453 the implication and the repulsiveness of the implication to the snug and tight little exclusionists of 1882 though we hold out that they were functioning well and ably relatively to 1882 that there is water oceans or lakes and ponds or rivers of it that there is water away from and yet not far remote from this earth's atmosphere and gravitation the pain of it that the snug little system of 1882 would be ousted from its reposfulness a whole new science to learn the science of super geography and science is a turtle that says that its own shell encloses all things so the members of the British Association to some of them to some of them professor Schwedhoff's ideas were like slaps on the back of an environment denying turtle to some of them his heresy was like an offering of meat, raw and dripping to milk-fed lambs some of them bleeded like lambs and some of them turdled like turtles we used to crucify but now we ridicule or in the loss of vigor of all progress the spike has etherealized into the laugh Sir William Thompson ridiculed the heresy with the fantasies of his era that all bodies such as hailstones if away from this earth's atmosphere would have to move at planetary velocity which would be positively reasonable if the pronouncements of Saint Isaac were anything but articles of faith that a hailstone falling through this earth's atmosphere with planetary velocity would perform 13,000 times as much work as would raise an equal weight of water one degree centigrade and therefore never fall as a hailstone at all be more than melted super volatilized these turtles and these bleeds of pedantry though we insist that relatively to 1882 these turtles and bleeds should be regarded as respectfully as we regard ragdolls that keep infants occupied and noiseless it is the survival of ragdolls into maturity that we object to so these pious and naive ones who believed 13,000 times something could have that is in quasi-existence an exact and calculable resultant whereas there is in quasi-existence nothing that can except by delusion and convenience be called a unit in the first place whose devotions to Saint Isaac required blind belief in formulas of falling bodies against data that were piling up in their own time of slow-falling meteorites milk warm ones admitted even by Farrington and Merrill at least one icy meteorite nowhere denied by the present orthodoxy a datum as accessible to Thompson in 1882 as it is now to us because it was an occurrence in 1960 beans and needles and tacks and a magnet needles and tacks adhere to and systematize relatively to a magnet but if some beans too be caught up they are irreconcilables to this system and drop right out of it a member of the Salvation Army may hear over and over data that seems so memorable to an evolutionist it seems remarkable that they do not influence him one finds that he cannot remember them it is incredible that Sir William Thompson had never heard of slow-falling cold meteorites it is simply that he had no power to remember such irreconcilabilities and then Mr. Simons again Mr. Simons was a man who probably did more for the science of meteorology than did any other man of his time therefore he probably did more to hold back the science of meteorology than did any other man of his time in Nature 41-135 Mr. Simons says that Professor Shwedoff's ideas are very droll I think that even more amusing is our own acceptance that not very far above this earth's surface is a region that will be the subject of a whole new science super geography with which we shall immortalize ourselves in the resentments of the school boys of the future pebbles and fragments of meteors and things from Jupiter and Azuria wedges delayed messages cannonballs, bricks nails, coal and coke and charcoal and offensive old cargos things that coat in ice in some regions and things that get into areas so warm that they putrify or that there are all the climates of geography super geography I shall have to accept that floating in the sky of this earth there often are fields of ice as extensive as those on the Arctic ocean volumes of water in which are many fishes and frogs tracts of land covered with caterpillars aviators of the future they fly up and up and they get out and walk the fishing's good the bait's right there they find messages from other worlds and within three weeks there's a big trade worked up in forged messages sometimes I shall write a guide book to the super sargasso sea for aviators but just at present there wouldn't be much call for it we now have more of our expression upon hail as a concomitant or more data of things that have fallen from the sky with hail in general the expression is these things may have been raised from some other part of the earth's surface in whirlwinds or may not have fallen and may have been upon the ground in the first place as I said before this expression is meaningless as to a few instances it is reasonable to think of some coincidence between the fall of hail and the fall of other things but in as much as there have been a good many instances we begin to suspect that this is not so much a book we're writing but in as much as there have been a good many instances we begin to suspect that this is not so much a book we're writing as a sanitarium for overworked coincidences if not conceivably could very large hailstones and lumps of ice from in this earth's atmosphere and so then had to come from external regions then other things in or accompanying very large hailstones and lumps of ice which worries us a little we may be instantly translated to the positive absolute cosmos 13120 quotes a Virginia newspaper that fishes said to have been catfishes a foot long some of them had fallen in 1853 at Norfolk, Virginia with hail vegetable debris not only nuclear but frozen upon the surfaces of large hailstones at Toulouse, France July 28th 1874 La Siense Porteau 1874 270 Description of a storm at Pontiac, Canada July 11th 1864 in which it is said that it was not hailstones that fell but pieces of ice from half an inch to over two inches in diameter Canadian naturalist 21308 but the most extraordinary thing is that a respectable farmer of undoubted veracity says he picked up a piece of hail or ice in the center of which fell green frog storm at Dubuque, Iowa June 16th 1882 in which fell hailstones and pieces of ice monthly weather review June 1882 the foreman of the novelty ironworks of this city states that in two large hailstones melted by him were found small living frogs but the pieces of ice that fell upon this occasion had a peculiarity that indicates though by as bizarre an indication as any we've had yet that they had been for a long time motionless or floating somewhere we'll take that up soon end of section 16 recording by Patrick McAfee Chicago GIS Dupal edu P. McAfee Chapter 13 of The Book of the Damned this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Patrick McAfee The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort Chapter 13B living age 52186 that June 30th, 1841 fishes one of which was 10 inches long fell at Boston that 8 days later fishes and ice fell at Derby in Timbs year book 172 275 it is said that at Derby the fishes had fallen in enormous numbers from half an inch to two inches long and some considerably larger in the Athenaeum 1841 542 copied from the Sheffield Patriot it is said that one of the fishes weighed 3 ounces in several accounts it is said with the fishes fell many small frogs and pieces of half melted ice we are told that the frogs and the fishes had been raised from some other part of the earth's surface in a whirlwind no whirlwind specified nothing said as to what part of the earth's surface comes ice in the month of July interests us that the ice is described as half melted in the London Times July 15 1841 it is said that the fishes were sticklebacks that they had fallen with ice and small frogs many of which had survived the fall we note that at Dumbfirm line three months later October 7 1841 fell many fishes several inches in length in a thunderstorm London Times October 12 1841 hailstones we don't care so much about the matter of stratification seems significant but we think more of the fall of lumps of ice from the sky as possible data of the Super Sargasso Sea lumps of ice afoot in circumference Derbyshire England May 12 1811 annual register 1811 54 cuboidal mass six inches in diameter that fell at Birmingham 26 days later Thomson intro to meteorology page 179 size of pumpkins Bangalore India May 22 1851 report British Association 1855 35 masses of ice of a pound and a half each New Hampshire August 13 1851 Lummis meteorology page 129 masses of ice size of a man's head in the Delphos tornado ferrule page 428 large as a man's hand killing thousands of sheep Texas May 3 1877 monthly weather review May 1877 pieces of ice so large that they could not be grasped in one hand in a tornado in Colorado June 24 1877 monthly weather review June 1877 lumps of ice four and a half inches long Richmond England August 2 1879 Simons meteorological magazine 14 100 mass of ice 21 inches in circumference that fell with hail Iowa June 1881 monthly weather review June 1881 pieces of ice eight inches long and an inch and a half thick Davenport, Iowa August 30 1882 monthly weather review August 1882 lump of ice size of a brick weight two pounds Chicago July 12 1883 monthly weather review July 1883 lumps of ice that weighed one pound and a half each India May 1888 nature 37 through 42 lump of ice weighing four pounds Texas December 6 1893 Scientific American 68 58 lumps of ice one pound in weight November 14 1901 in a tornado Victoria meteorology of Australia page 34 of course it is our acceptance that these masses not only accompanied tornadoes but were brought down to this earth by tornadoes Flammarion The Atmosphere page 34 block of ice weighing four and a half pounds that fell at Cazorta, Spain June 15 1829 block of ice weighing 11 pounds at Sitre, France October 1844 mass of ice three feet long three feet wide and more than two feet thick that fell in a storm in Hungary May 8 1802 Scientific American 47 119 that according to the Salina Journal a mass of ice weighing about 80 pounds had fallen from the sky near Salina, Kansas August 1882 it was told that Mr. W. J. Hagler the North Santa Fe merchant became possessor of it and packed it in sawdust in his store London Times April 7 1860 that upon the 16th of March 1860 in a snowstorm in Upper Wasdale blocks of ice so large that at a distance block of sheep had fallen report of the British Association 1851 32 that a mass of ice about a cubic yard in size had fallen at Kondish, India 1828 against these data though so far as I know so many of them have never been assembled together before there is a silence on the part of scientific men that is unusual our super sargasso sea may not be an unavoidable conclusion but a rival upon this earth of ice from external regions does seem to be except that there must be be it ever so faint a merger it is in the notion that these masses of ice are only congealed hailstones we have data against this notion as applied to all our instances but the explanation has been offered and it seems to me may apply in some instances in the bulletin society astronomical de France 2245 it is said of blocks of ice the size of decanters that had fallen at Tunis that they were only masses of congealed hailstones london times august 4th 1857 that a block of ice described as pure ice weighing 25 pounds had been found in the meadow of mr. warner of cricklewood there had been a storm the day before as in some of our other instances no one had seen this object fall from the sky it was found after the storm that is all that can be said about it letter from captain blackeston communicated by general sabine to the royal society london royal society proceedings 10468 that january 14th 1860 in a thunderstorm pieces of ice had fallen upon captain blackestons vessel that it was not hail it was not hail but irregular shaped pieces of solid ice of different dimensions up to the size of half a brick according to the advertiser scotsman quoted by the Edinburgh new philosophical magazine 47371 an irregular shaped mass of ice fell at scotland august 1849 after an extraordinary peel of thunder it is said that this was homogeneous ice except in a small part which looked like congealed hailstones the mass was about 20 feet in circumference the story as told in the london times august 14th 1849 of the 13th of august 1849 after a loud peel of thunder a mass of ice said to have been 20 feet in circumference had fallen upon the estate of Mr. Moffat of Balvulich Rossshire it is said that this object fell alone or without hailstones altogether though it is not so strong for the super sargasso sea I think this is one of our best expressions upon external origins that large blocks of ice could form in the moisture of this earth's atmosphere is about as likely as that blocks of stone could form in a dust world of course if ice or water comes to this earth from external sources we think of at least minute organisms in it and on with our data to frogs, fishes one to anything that's thinkable coming from external sources it's of great importance to us to accept that large lumps of ice have fallen from the sky but what we desire most perhaps because of our interest in its archeologic and paleontologic treasures is now to be through with tentativeness and probation and to take the super sargasso sea into full acceptance in our more advanced fold of the chosen of this 20th century in the report of the British association 1855 37 it is said that at Puranur India December 11th 1854 flat pieces of ice many of them weighing several pounds each I suppose had fallen from the sky they are described as large ice flakes vast fields of ice in the super arctic regions or strata of the super sargasso sea when they break up their fragments are flake like in our acceptance there are aerial ice fields that are remote from this earth that break up fragments grinding against one another forming in vapor and water of different constituency in different regions forming slowly as stratified hillstones but that there are ice fields near this earth that break up into just such flat pieces of ice as cover any pond or river when ice of a pond or river is broken and are sometimes soon precipitated to the earth in this flat formation simons meteorological magazine 43 154 a correspondent writes that at braymar july 2nd 1908 when the sky was clear overhead and the sun shining flat pieces of ice fell from somewhere the sun was shining but something was going on somewhere thunder was heard until I saw the reproduction of a photograph in the scientific American February 21st 1914 I had supposed that these ice fields must be say at least 10 or 20 miles away from this earth an invisible to terrestrial observers except as the blurrs that have so often been reported by astronomers and meteorologists the photograph published by the scientific American is of an aggregation supposed to be clouds presumably not very high so clearly detailed are they the writer says that they looked to him like a field of broken ice beneath is a picture of a conventional field of ice floating ordinarily in water the resemblance between the two pictures is striking nevertheless it seems to me incredible the photographs could be of an aerial ice field or that gravitation could cease to act at only a mile or so from this earth's surface unless the exceptional the flux and vagary of all things or that normally this earth's gravitation extends say 10 or 15 miles outward gravitation must be rhythmic of course in the pseudo formulas of astronomers gravitation as a fixed quantity is essential except that gravitation is a variable force and astronomers deflate with a perceptible hissing sound into the punctured condition of economists biologists meteorologists and inventories who can admittedly offer only insecure approximations we refer all who would not like to hear the hiss of escaping arrogance to Herbert Spencer's chapters upon the rhythm of all phenomena if everything else light from the stars heat from the sun the winds and the tides forms and colors and supplies and prices political opinions and chemical reactions and religious doctrines and magnetic intensities and the ticking of clocks and arrival and departure of the seasons if everything else is variable we accept that the notion of gravitation as fixed and formulable is only another attempted positivism doomed like all other illusions of realness and quasi-existence so it is intermediateism to accept that though gravitation may approximate higher to invariability than do the winds for instance it must be somewhere between the absolutes of stability and instability here then we are not much impressed with the opposition of physicists and astronomers thankfully that their language is of expiring cibulations so then the fields of ice in the sky and that though usually so far away as to be mere blurrs at times they come close enough to be seen in detail for description of what I call a blurr see popular science news February 1884 the sky in general unusually clear but near the sun a white slightly curdled haze which was dazzlingly bright we accept that sometimes fields of ice pass between the sun and the earth that many strata of ice or very thick fields of ice or superimposed fields would obscure the sun that there have been occasions when the sun was eclipsed by fields of ice flammarion the atmosphere page 394 that a profound darkness came upon the city of brussels June 18, 1839 there fell flat pieces of ice an inch long intense darkness at Atkin, Minnesota April 2, 1889 sand and solid chunks of ice reported to have fallen science April 19, 1889 in Simon's meteorological magazine 32.172 are outlined rough edged but smooth surfaced pieces of ice that fell at Manassas, Virginia August 10, 1897 they look as much like the roughly broken fragments of a smooth sheet of ice as ever have roughly broken fragments of a smooth sheet of ice looked about 2 inches across and 1 inch thick in Cosmos 3.116 it is said that at Rouen July 5, 1853 fell irregular shaped pieces of ice about the size of a hand described as looking as if all had been broken from one enormous block of ice that I think was an aerial iceberg in the awful density or almost absolute stupidity of the 19th century it never occurred to anybody to look for traces of polar bears or of seals upon these fragments of course seeing what we want to see having been able to gather these data only because they are in agreement with notions formed in advance we are not so respectful to our own notions as to a similar impression forced upon an observer who had no theory or acceptance to support in general our prejudices see and our prejudices investigate but this should not be taken as an absolute monthly weather review July 1894 that from the Weather Bureau of Portland, Oregon a tornado of June 3rd, 1894 was reported fragments of ice fell from the sky they averaged 3 to 4 inches square and about an inch thick in length and breadth they had the smooth surfaces by our acceptance and according to the writer in the review gave the impression of a vast field of ice suspended in the atmosphere and suddenly broken into fragments about the size of the palm of the hand this datum profoundly of what we used to call the damned or before we could no longer accept judgment or cut and dried condemnation by infants, turtles and lambs was copied but without comment in the Scientific American 71 371 our theology is something like this of course we ought to be damned but we revolt against adjudication by infants, turtles and lambs so now come to some remarkable data in a rather difficult department of super geography vast fields of aerial ice there's a lesson to me in the treachery of the imaginable most of our opposition is in the clearness with which the conventional but impossible becomes the imaginable and then the resistant to modifications after it had become the conventional with me I conceived clearly of vast sheets of ice a few miles above this earth then the shining of the sun and the ice partly melting that note upon the ice that fell at Derby water trickling and forming icicles upon the lower surface of the ice sheet I seemed to look up and so clearly visualized those icicles hanging like stalactites from a flat roofed cave in white calcite or I looked up at the underside of an aerial ice lump and seemed to see a papillation similar to that observed by a calf at times but then but then if icicles should form upon the underside of a sheet of aerial ice that would be by the falling of water toward this earth an icicle is of course an expression of gravitation and if water melting from ice should fall toward this earth why not the ice itself fall before an icicle could have time to form of course in quasi existence where everything is a paradox one might argue that the water falls but the ice does not because the ice is heavier that is in masses that notion I think belongs in a more advanced course than we are taking in present expression upon icicles a vast field of aerial ice it is inert to this earth's gravitation but by universal flux and variation part of it sags closer to this earth and is susceptible to gravitation by cohesion with the main mass this part does not fall but water melting from it does fall and forms icicles then by various disturbances this part sometimes falls in fragments that are protrusive with icicles of the ice that fell some of it in closing living frogs at Dubuque, Iowa June 16, 1882 it is said monthly weather review June 1882 that there were pieces from 1 to 17 inches in circumference the largest weighing 1 pound and 3 quarters that upon some of them were icicles half an inch in length we emphasize that these objects were not hailstones the only merger is that of knobby hailstones or of large hailstones with protuberances wrought by crystallization but that is no merger with terrestrial phenomena and such formations are not accountable to orthodoxy or it is incredible that hail could so crystallize not forming by accretion in the fall of a few seconds for an account of such hailstones see nature 61, 594 note the size some of them the size of turkey's eggs it is our expression that sometimes the icicles themselves have fallen by concussion or as if something had swept against the underside of an aerial ice flow detaching its papillations monthly weather review June 1889 that at Oswego, New York June 11th, 1889 according to the Turin, New York leader there fell in a thunderstorm pieces of ice that resembled fragments of icicles monthly weather review 29506 that on Florence Island St. Lawrence River August 8th, 1901 with ordinary hail fell pieces of ice formed like icicles the size and shape of lead pencils that had been cut into sections about 3 eighths of an inch so our data of the Super Sargasso Sea and its Arctic region and for weeks at a time an ice field may hang motionless over part of this earth's surface the sun has some effect upon it but not much until late in the afternoon I should say part of it has sagged but is held up by cohesion with the main mass whereupon we have such an occurrence as would have been a little uncanny to us once upon a time or fall of water from a cloudless sky day after day in one small part of this earth's surface late in the afternoon when the sun's rays had had time for their effects monthly weather review October 1886 that according to the Charlotte Chronicle October 21st 1886 for three weeks there had been a fall of water from the sky in Charlotte North Carolina localized in one particular spot every afternoon about 3 o'clock that whether the sky was cloudy or cloudless the water or rain fell upon a small patch of land between two trees and nowhere else this is the newspaper account and as such it seems in the depths of the unchosen either by me or any other expression of the Salvation Army the account by the signal service observer at Charlotte published in the review follows an unusual phenomenon was witnessed on the 21st having been informed that for some weeks prior to date the rain had been falling daily after 3pm on a particular spot near two trees corner of 9th and D streets I visited the place and saw precipitation in the form of raindrops at 4.47 and 4.55pm while the sun was shining brightly on the 22nd I again visited the place and from 4.05 at 4.25pm a light shower of rain fell from a cloudless sky sometimes the precipitation falls over an area of half an acre but always appears to center at these two trees and when lightest occurs there only End of Chapter 13 Recording by Patrick McAfee Chicago G-I-S Dot DePaul Dot E-D-U Slash P. McAfee