The Book of the Damned

Prof. Schwedoff's paper was read before the British Association (Rept. of 1882, p. 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 reposefulness-- 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 Prof. Schwedoff'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 bleated like lambs, and some of them turled 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 Thomson ridiculed the heresy, with the phantomosities 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 St. 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-volatalized--