BOOK OF THE DAMNED 191 



non." I suppose he was not a hopeless addict to explaining. Ex- 

 traordinary we fear he must have been a man of loose habits in 

 some other respects. 



As to us 



Monstrator. 



In the Monthly Notices of the R. A. S., Feb., 1877, Zeverrier, who 

 never lost faith, up to the last day, gives the six observations upon 

 an unknown body of planetary size, that he had formulated: 



Fritsche, Oct. 10, 1802; Stark, Oct. 9, 1819; De Cuppis, Oct. 30, 

 1839; Sidebotham, Nov. 12, 1849; Lescarbault, March 26, 1859; 

 Lummis, March 20, 1862. 



If we weren't so accustomed to Science in its essential aspect of 

 Disregard, we'd be mystified and impressed, like the Editor of 

 Nature, with the formulation of these data: agreement of so many 

 instances would seem incredible as a coincidence: but our acceptance 

 is that, with just enough disregard, astronomers and fortune-tellers 

 can formulate anything or we'd engage, ourselves, to formulate 

 periodicities in the crowds in Broadway say that every Wednesday 

 morning, a tall man, with one leg and a black eye, carrying a rubber 

 plant, passes the Singer Building, at quarter past ten o'clock. Of 

 course it couldn't really be done, unless such a man did have such 

 periodicity, but if some Wednesday mornings it should be a small 

 child lugging a barrel, or a fat negress with a week's wash, by or- 

 dinary disregard that would be prediction good enough for the 

 kind of quasi-existence we're in. 



So whether we accuse, or whether we think that the word "ac- 

 cuse" over-dignifies an attitude toward a quasi-astronomer, or mere 

 figment in a super-dream, our acceptance is that Leverrier never did 

 formulate observations 



That he picked out observations that could be formulated 



That of this type are all formulas 



That, if Leverrier had not been himself helplessly hypnotized, or 

 if he had had in him more than a tincture of realness, never could he 

 have been beguiled by such a quasi-process: but that he was hypno- 

 tized, and so extended, or transferred, his condition to others, that 

 upon March 22, 1877, he had this earth bristling with telescopes, 

 with the rigid and almost inanimate forms of astronomers behind 

 them 



And not a blessed thing of any unusuality was seen upon that day 

 or succeeding days. 



