BOOK OF THE DAMNED 127 



mentions not a trace of sulphur. Of course our weakness, or im- 

 positiveness, lies in that, by any one to whom it would be agreeable 

 to find sulphur in this thing, sulphur would be found in it by our 

 own intermediatism there is some sulphur in everything, or sulphur 

 is only a localization or emphasis of something that, unemphasized, 

 is in all things. 



So there have, or haven't, been found upon this earth, things 

 that fell from the sky, or that were left behind by extra-mundane 

 visitors to this earth 



A yarn in the London Times, June 22, 1844: that some work- 

 men, quarrying rock, close to the Tweed, about a quarter of a 

 mile below Rutherford Mills, discovered a gold thread embedded in 

 the stone, at a depth of 8 feet: that a piece of the gold thread had 

 been sent to the office of the Kelso Chronicle. 



Pretty little thing; not at all frowsy; rather damnable. 



London Times, Dec. 24, 1851: 



That Hiram De Witt, of Springfield, Mass., returning from Cali- 

 fornia, had brought with him a piece of auriferous quartz about 

 the size of a man's fist. It was accidentally dropped split open 

 nail in it. There was a cut-iron nail, size of a six-penny nail, 

 slightly corroded. "It was entirely straight and had a perfect 

 head." 



Or California ages ago, when auriferous quartz was forming 

 super-carpenter, million of miles or so up in the air drops a 

 nail. 



To one not an intermediatist, it would seem incredible that this 

 datum, not only of the damned, but of the lowest of the damned, 

 or of the journalistic caste of the accursed, could merge away with 

 something else damned only by disregard, and backed by what is 

 called "highest scientific authority" 



Communication by Sir David Brewster (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1845- 



so: 



That a nail had been found in a block of stone, from Kingoodie 

 Quarry, North Britain. The block in which the nail was found 

 was nine inches thick, but as to what part of the quarry it had come 

 from, there is no evidence except that it could not have been from 

 the surface. The quarry had been worked about twenty years. It 

 consisted of alternate layers of hard stone and a substance called 

 "till." The point of the nail, quite eaten with rust, projected into 

 some "till," upon the surface of the block of stone. The rest of the 



