I 4 8 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



Translation by M. Jombard: 



"Thy orders are laws: thou shinest in impetuous elan and rapid 

 chamois." 



M. Maurice Schwab: 



"The chief of Emigration who reached these places (or this 

 island) has fixed these characters forever." 



M. Oppert: 



"The grave of one who was assassinated here. May God, to re- 

 venge him, strike his murderer, cutting off the hand of his 

 existence." 



I like the first one best. I have such a vivid impression from 

 it of some one polishing up brass or something, and in an awful 

 hurry. Of course the third is more dramatic still they're all very 

 good. They are perturbations of one another, I suppose. 



In Tract 44, Col. Whittelsey returns to the subject. He gives 

 the conclusion of Major De Helward, at the Congress of Luxem- 

 bourg, 1877: 



"If Prof. Read and myself are right in the conclusion that the 

 figures are neither of the Runic, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew, 

 Lybian, Celtic, or any other alphabet-language, its importance has 

 been greatly over-rated." 



Obvious to a child; obvious to any mentality not helplessly sub- 

 jected to a system: 



That just therein lies the importance of this object. 



It is said that an ideal of science is to find out the new but, un- 

 less a thing be of the old, it is "unimportant." 



"It is not worth while." (Hovey.) 



Then the inscribed ax, or wedge, which, according to Dr. John 

 C. Evans, in a communication to the American Ethnological So- 

 ciety, was plowed up, near Pemberton, N. J., 1859. The char- 

 acters upon this ax, or wedge, are strikingly similar to the charac- 

 ters on the Grave Creek stone. Also, with a little disregard here 

 and a little more there, they look like tracks in the snow by some 

 one's who's been out celebrating, or like your handwriting, or mine, 

 when we think there's a certain distinction in illegibility. Method 

 of disregard: anything's anything. 



Dr. Abbott describes this object in the Report of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, 1875-260. 



He says he has no faith in it. 



All progress is from the outrageous to the commonplace. Or 

 quasi-existence proceeds from rape to the crooning of lullabies. 



