Lo! (3 page)

PART I

1

A naked man in a city street—the track of a horse in volcanic mud—the mystery of reindeer’s ears—a huge, black form, like a whale, in the sky, and it drips red drops as if attacked by celestial swordfishes—an appalling cherub appears in the sea—

Confusions.

Showers of frogs and blizzards of snails—gushes of periwinkles down from the sky—

The preposterous, the grotesque, the incredible—and why, if I am going to tell of hundreds of these, is the quite ordinary so regarded?

An unclothed man shocks a crowd—a moment later, if nobody is generous with an overcoat, somebody is collecting handkerchiefs to knot around him.

A naked fact startles a meeting of a scientific society—and whatever it has for loins is soon diapered with conventional explanations.

Chaos and muck and filth—the indeterminable and the unrecordable and the unknowable—and all men are liars—and yet—

Wigwams on an island—sparks in their columns of smoke.

Centuries later—the uncertain columns are towers. What once were fluttering sparks are the motionless lights of windows. According to critics of Tammany Hall, there has been monstrous corruption upon this island: nevertheless, in the midst of it, this regularization has occurred. A woodland sprawl has sprung to stony attention.

The Princess Caraboo tells, of herself, a story, in an unknown language, and persons who were themselves liars have said that she lied, though nobody has ever known what she told. The story of Dorothy Arnold has been told thousands of times, but the story of Dorothy Arnold and the swan has not been told before. A city turns to a crater, and casts out eruptions, as lurid as fire, of living things—and where Cagliostro came from, and where he went, are so mysterious that only historians say they know—venomous snakes crawl on the sidewalks of London—and a star twinkles—

But the underlying oneness in all confusions.

An onion and a lump of ice—and what have they in common?

Traceries of ice, millions of years ago, forming on the surface of a pond—later, with different materials, these same forms will express botanically. If something had examined primordial frost, it could have predicted jungles. Times when there was not a living thing on the face of this earth—and, upon pyrolusite, there were etchings of forms that, after the appearance of cellulose, would be trees. Dendritic sketches, in silver and copper, prefigured ferns and vines.

Mineral specimens now in museums—calcites that are piles of petals or that long ago were the rough notes of a rose. Scales, horns, quills, thorns, teeth, arrows, spears, bayonets—long before they were the implements and weapons of living things they were mineral forms. I know of an ancient sketch that is today a specimen in a museum—a colorful, little massacre that was composed of calcites ages before religion was dramatized—pink forms impaled upon mauve spears, sprinkled with drops of magenta. I know of a composition of barytes that appeared ages before the Israelites made what is said to be history—blue waves heaped high on each side of a drab streak of forms like the horns of cattle, heads of asses, humps of camels, turbans, and upheld hands.

Underlying oneness
—

A new star appears—and just how remote is it from drops of water, of unknown origin, falling on a cottonwood tree, in Oklahoma? Just what have the tree and the star to do with the girl of Swanton Novers, upon whom gushed streams of oils? And why was a clergyman equally greasy? Earthquakes and droughts and the sky turns black with spiders, and, near Trenton, N.J., something pegged stones at farmers. If lights that have been seen in the sky were upon the vessels of explorers from other worlds—then living in New York City, perhaps, or in Washington, D.C, perhaps, there are inhabitants of Mars, who are secretly sending reports upon the ways of this world to their governments?

A theory feels its way through surrounding ignorance—the tendrils of a vine feel their way along a trellis—a wagon train feels its way across a prairie—

Underlying oneness
—

Projections of limonite, in a suffusion of smoky quartz—it will be ages before this little mineral sketch can develop into the chimneys and the smoke of Pittsburgh. But it reproduces when a volcano blasts the vegetation on a mountain, and smoke forms hang around the stumps of trees. Broken shafts of an ancient city in a desert—they are projections in the tattered gusts of a sandstorm. It’s Napoleon Bonaparte’s retreat from Moscow—ragged bands, in the grimy snow, stumbling amidst abandoned cannon.

Maybe it was only coincidence—or what may there be to Napoleon’s own belief that something was supervising him? Suppose it is that, in November, 1812, Napoleon’s work, as a factor in European readjustments, was done. There was no military power upon this earth that could remove this one, whose work was done. There came coldness so intense that it destroyed the Grand Army.

Human knowledge—and its fakes and freaks. An astronomer, insulated by his vanity, seemingly remote from the flops and frailties of everybody else, may not be so far away as he thinks he is. He calculates where an undiscovered planet will be seen. “Lo!”—as the astronomers like to say—it is seen. But, for some very distressing, if not delightful, particulars, see, later, an account of Lowell’s planet. Stars are said to be trillions of miles away, but there are many alleged remotenesses that are not so far away as they are said to be.

The Johnstown flood, and the smash of Peru, and the little nigger that was dragged to a police station—

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Terrified horses, up on their hind legs, hoofing a storm of frogs. Frenzied springboks, capering their exasperations against frogs that were tickling them.

Storekeepers, in London, gaping at frogs that were tapping on their window panes.

We shall pick up an existence by its frogs.

Wise men have tried other ways. They have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.

I have collected 294 records of showers of living things.

Have I?

Well, there’s no accounting for the freaks of industry.

It is the profound conviction of most of us that there never has been a shower of living things. But some of us have, at least in an elementary way, been educated by surprises out of much that we were “absolutely sure” of, and are suspicious of a thought, simply because it is a profound conviction.

I got the story of the terrified horses in the storm of frogs from Mr. George C. Stoker, of Lovelock, Nev. Mr. John Reid, of Lovelock, who is known to me as a writer upon geological subjects, vouches for Mr. Stoker, and I vouch for Mr. Reid. Mr. Stoker vouches for me. I have never heard of anything—any pronouncement, dogma, enunciation, or pontification—that was better substantiated.

What is a straight line? A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Well, then, what is a shortest distance between two points? That is a straight line. According to the test of ages, the definition that a straight line is a straight line cannot be improved upon. I start with a logic as exacting as Euclid’s.

Mr. Stoker was driving along the Newark Valley, one of the most extensive of the desert regions of Nevada. Thunderstorm. Down came frogs. Up on their hind legs went the horses.

The exasperated springboks. They were told of, in the
Northern News
(Vryburg, Transvaal) March 21, 1925, by Mr. C.J. Grewar, of Uitenhage. Also I have a letter from Mr. Grewar.

The Flats—about fifty miles from Uitenhage—springboks leaping and shaking themselves unaccountably. At a distance, Mr. Grewar could conceive of no explanation of such eccentricities. He investigated, and saw that a rain of little frogs and fishes had pelted the springboks. Mr. Grewar heard that some time before, at the same place, there had been a similar shower.

Coffins have come down from the sky: also, as everybody knows, silk hats and horse collars and pajamas. But these things have come down at the time of a whirlwind. The two statements that I start with are that no shower exclusively of coffins, nor of marriage certificates, nor of alarm clocks has been recorded: but that showers exclusively of living things are common. And yet the explanation by orthodox scientists who accept that showers of living things have occurred is that the creatures were the products of whirlwinds. The explanation is that little frogs, for instance, fall from the sky, unmixed with anything else, because, in a whirlwind, the creatures were segregated, by differences in specific gravity. But when a whirlwind strikes a town, away go detachables in a monstrous mixture, and there’s no findable record of washtubs coming down in one place, all the town’s cats in one falling battle that lumps its infelicities in one place, and all the kittens coming down together somewhere else, in a distant bunch that miaows for its lump of mothers.

See London newspapers, Aug. 18 and 19, 1921—innumerable little frogs that appeared, during a thunderstorm, upon the 17th, in streets of the northern part of London.

I have searched in almost all London newspapers, and in many provincial newspapers, and in scientific publications. There is, find-able by me, no mention of a whirlwind upon the 17th of August, and no mention of a fall from the sky of anything else that might be considered another segregated discharge from a whirlwind, if there had been a whirlwind.

A whirlwind runs amok, and is filled with confusions: and yet to the incoherences of such a thing have been attributed the neatest of classifications. I do not say that no wind ever scientifically classifies objects. I have seen orderly, or logical, segregations by wind action. I ask for records of whirlwinds that do this. There is no perceptible science by a whirlwind, in the delivery of its images. It rants trees, doors, frogs, and parts of cows. But living things have fallen from the sky, or in some unknown way have appeared, and have arrived homogeneously. If they have not been segregated by winds, something has selected them.

There have been repetitions of these arrivals. The phenomenon of repetition, too, is irreconcilable with the known ways of whirlwinds. There is an account, in the London
Daily News,
Sept. 5, 1922, of little toads, which for two days had been dropping from the sky, at Chalon-sur-Saône, France.

Lies, yarns, hoaxes, mistakes—what’s the specific gravity of a lie, and how am I to segregate?

That could be done only relatively to a standard, and I have never heard of any standard, in any religion, philosophy, science, or complication of household affairs that could not be made to fit any requirement. We fit standards to judgments, or break any law that it pleases us to break, and fit to the fracture some other alleged law that we say is higher and nobler. We have conclusions, which are the products of senility or incompetence or credulity, and then argue from them to premises. We forget this process, and then argue from the premises, thinking we began there.

There are accounts of showering things that came from so far away that they were unknown in places where they arrived.

If only horses and springboks express emotions in these matters, we’ll be calm thinking that even living things may have been transported to this earth from other worlds.

Philadelphia Public Ledger,
Aug. 8, 1891—a great shower of fishes, at Seymour, Ind. They were unknown fishes.
Public Ledger,
Feb. 6, 1890—a shower of fishes, in Montgomery County, California. “The fishes belong to a species altogether unknown here.”
New York Sun,
May 29, 1892—a shower, at Coalburg, Alabama, of an enormous number of eels that were unknown in Alabama. Somebody said that he knew of such eels, in the Pacific Ocean. Piles of them in the streets—people alarmed—farmers coming with carts, and taking them away for fertilizing material.

Our subject has been treated scientifically, or too scientifically. There have been experiments. I have no more of an ill opinion of experimental science than I have of everything else, but I have been an experimenter, myself, and have impressions of the servile politeness of experiments. They have such an obliging, or ingratiating, way that there’s no trusting the flatterers. In the
Redruth
(Cornwall, England)
Independent,
Aug. 13, and following issues, 1886, correspondents tell of a shower of snails near Redruth. There were experiments. One correspondent, who believed that the creatures were sea snails, put some in salt water. They lived. Another correspondent, who believed that they were not sea snails, put some in salt water. They died.

I do not know how to find out anything new without being offensive. To the ignorant, all things are pure: all knowledge is, or implies, the degradation of something. One who learns of metabolism, looks at a Venus, and realizes she’s partly rotten. However, she smiles at him, and he renews his ignorance. All things in the sky are pure to those who have no telescopes. But spots on the sun, and lumps on the planets—and, being a person of learning, or, rather, erudition, myself, I’ve got to besmirch something, or nobody will believe I am—and I replace the pure, blue sky with the wormy heavens—

London
Evening Standard,
Jan. 3, 1924—red objects falling with snow at Halmstead, Sweden.

They were red worms, from one to four inches in length. Thousands of them streaking down with the snowflakes—red ribbons in a shower of confetti—a carnival scene that boosts my discovery that meteorology is a more picturesque science than most persons, including meteorologists, have suspected—and I fear me that my attempt to besmirch has not been successful, because the worms of heaven seem to be a jolly lot. However, I cheer up at thought of chances to come, because largely I shall treat of human nature.

But how am I to know whether these things fell from the sky in Sweden, or were imagined in Sweden?

I shall be scientific about it. Said Sir Isaac Newton—or virtually said he—“If there is no change in the direction of a moving body, the direction of a moving body is not changed. But,” continued he, “if something be changed, it is changed as much as it is changed.” So red worms fell from the sky, in Sweden, because from the sky, in Sweden, red worms fell. How do geologists determine the age of rocks? By the fossils in them. And how do they determine the age of the fossils? By the rocks they’re in. Having started with the logic of Euclid, I go on with the wisdom of a Newton.