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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
183
Proc.
Amer.
Phil.
Soc.,
12-224:
That,
in
July,
1871,
a
letter
was
received
from
Mr.
Jacob
W.
Moffit,
of
Chillicothe,
Ill.,
enclosing
a
photograph
of
a
coin,
which
he
said
had
been
brought
up,
by
him,
while
boring,
from
a
depth
of
120
feet.
Of
course,
by
conventional
scientific
standards,
such
depth
has
some
extraordinary
meaning.
Palaeontologists,
geologists,
and
archaeologists
consider
themselves
reasonable
in
arguing
ancient
origin
of
the
far-buried.
We
only
accept:
depth
is
a
pseudo-standard
with
us;
one
earthquake
could
bury
a
coin
of
recent
mintage
120
feet
below
the
surface.
According
to
a
writer
in
the
Proceedings,
the
coin
is
uniform
in
thickness,
and
had
never
been
hammered
out
by
savages--"there
are
other
tokens
of
the
machine
shop."
But,
according
to
Prof.
Leslie,
it
is
an
astrologic
amulet.
"There
are
upon
it
the
signs
of
Pisces
and
Leo."
Or,
with
due
disregard,
you
can
find
signs
of
your
great-grand-mother,
or
of
the
Crusades,
or
of
the
Mayans,
upon
anything
that
ever
came
from
Chillicothe
or
from
a
five
and
ten
cent
store.
Anything
that
looks
like
a
cat
and
a
goldfish
looks
like
Leo
and
Pisces:
but,
by
due
suppressions
and
distortions
there's
nothing
that
can't
be
made
to
look
like
a
cat
and
a
goldfish.
I
fear
me
we're
turning
a
little
irritable
here.
To
be
damned
by
slumbering
giants
and
interesting
little
harlots
and
clowns
who
rank
high
in
their
profession
is
at
least
supportable
to
our
vanity;
but,
we
find
that
the
anthropologists
are
of
the
slums
of
the
divine,
or
of
an
archaic
kindergarten
of
intellectuality,
and
it
is
very
unflattering
to
find
a
mess
of
moldy
infants
sitting
in
judgment
upon
us.
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