The Book of the Damned

In the December number of the Review is a letter from Edward M. Boggs--that the light was a reflection, perhaps, from the glare--one light, this time--from the locomotive's fire-box, upon wet telegraph wires--an appearance that might not be striated by the wires, but consolidated into one rotundity--that it had seemed to oscillate with the undulations of the wires, and had seemed to change horizontal distance with the varying angles of reflection, and had seemed to advance or fall behind, when the train had rounded curves. All of which is typical of the best of quasi-reasoning. It includes and assimilates diverse data: but it excludes that which will destroy it: That, acceptably, the telegraph wires were alongside the track beyond, as well as leading to Linville. Mr. Crotsenburg thinks of "ball lightning," which, though a sore bewilderment to most speculation, is usually supposed to be a correlate with the old system of thought: but his awareness of "something else" is expressed in other parts of his letters, when he says that he has something to tell that is "so strange that I should never have mentioned it, even to my friends, had it not been corroborated... so unreal that I hesitated to speak of it, fearing that it was some freak of the imagination." 27 Vast and black. The thing that was poised, like a crow over the moon. Round and smooth. Cannon balls. Things that have fallen from the sky to this earth. Our slippery brains. Things like cannon balls have fallen, in storms, upon this earth. Like cannon balls are things that, in storms, have fallen to this earth.