The Book of the Damned

It was about as terrifying as the scratch of a match on the seat of some breeches half a mile away. It was not on time. Though I have heard that a faint nebulosity, which I did not see, myself, though I looked when I was told to look, was seen in the sky, it appeared several days after the time predicted. A hypnotized host of imbeciles of us: told to look up at the sky: we did--like a lot of pointers hypnotized by a partridge. The effect: Almost everybody now swears that he saw Halley's comet, and that it was a glorious spectacle. An interesting circumstance here is that seemingly we are trying to discredit astronomers because astronomers oppose us--that's not my impression. We shall be in the Brahmin caste of the hell of the Baptists. Almost all our data, in some regiments of this procession, are observations by astronomers, few of them mere amateur astronomers. It is the System that opposes us. It is the System that is suppressing astronomers. I think we pity them in their captivity. Ours is not malice--in a positive sense. It's chivalry--somewhat. Unhappy astronomers looking out from high towers in which they are imprisoned--we appear upon the horizon. But, as I have said, our data do not relate to some especial other world. I mean very much what a savage upon an ocean island might vaguely think of in his speculations--not upon some other land, but complexes of continents and their phenomena: cities, factories in cities, means of communication--