144 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



in Egypt." As to its discovery in an Illinois mound, Dr. Emerson 

 disclaims responsibility. But what strikes me here is that a joker 

 should not have been satisfied with an ordinary Roman coin. Where 

 did he get a rare coin, and why was it not missed from some col- 

 lection? I have looked over numismatic journals enough to accept 

 that the whereabouts of every rare coin in any one's possession is 

 known to coin-collectors. Seems to me nothing left but to call this 

 another "identification." 



Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 12-224: 



That, in July, 1871, a letter was received from Mr. Jacob W. 

 Moffit, of Chillicothe, 111., enclosing a photograph of a coin, which 

 he said had been brought up, by him, while boring, from a depth of 

 120 feet. 



Of course, by conventional scientific standards, such depth has 

 some extraordinary meaning. Paleontologists, geologists, and 

 archaeologists consider themselves reasonable in arguing ancient 

 origin of the far-buried. We only accept: depth is a pseudo-stand- 

 ard with us; one earthquake could bury a coin of recent mintage 120 

 feet below the surface. 



According to a writer in the Proceedings, the coin is uniform 

 in thickness, and had never been hammered out by savages "there 

 are other tokens of the machine shop." 



But according to Prof. Leslie, it is an astrologic amulet. "There are 

 upon it the signs of Pisces and Leo." 



Or, with due disregard, you can find signs of your great grand- 

 mother, or of the Crusades, or of the Mayans, upon anything that 

 ever came from Chillicothe or from a five and ten cent store. 

 Anything that looks like a cat and a gold fish looks like Leo and 

 Pisces: but, by due suppressions and distortions there's nothing that 

 can't be made to look like a cat and a gold fish. I fear me we're 

 turning a little irritable here. To be damned by slumbering giants 

 and interesting little harlots and clowns who rank high in their pro- 

 fession is at least supportable to our vanity; but, we find that the 

 anthropologists are of the slums of the divine, or of an archaic kinder- 

 garten of intellectuality, and it is very unflattering to find a mess of 

 moldy infants sitting in judgment upon us. 



Prof. Leslie then finds, as arbitrarily as one might find that some 

 joker put the Brooklyn Bridge where it is, that "the piece was placed 

 there as a practical joke, though not by its present owner; and is 

 a modern fabrication, perhaps of the sixteenth century, possibly His- 

 pano-American or French-American origin." 



