BOOK OF THE DAMNED 221 



That, according to the La Crosse Daily Republ zan y of March 20. 

 1886, darkness suddenly settled upon the city of Oshkosh, Wis., 

 at 3 p. m., March 19. In five minutes the darkness equaled that of 

 midnight. 



Consternation. 



I think that some of us are likely to overdo our own superiority 

 and the absurd fears of the Middle Ages 



Oshkosh. 



People in the streets rushing in all directions horses running 

 away women and children running into cellars little modern 

 touch after all: gas meters instead of images and relics of saints. 



This darkness, which lasted from eight to ten minutes, occurred 

 in a day that had been "light but cloudy." It passed from west to 

 east, and brightness followed: then came reports from towns to the 

 west of Oshkosh: that the same phenomenon had already occurred 

 there. A "wave of total darkness" had passed from west to east. 



Other instances are recorded in the Monthly Weather Review, 

 but, as to all of them, we have a sense of being pretty well-eclipsed, 

 ourselves, by the conventional explanation that the obscuring body 

 was only a very dense mass of clouds. But some of the instances 

 are interesting intense darkness at Memphis, Tenn., for about fif- 

 teen minutes, at 10 a. m., Dec. 2, 1904 "We are told that in some 

 quarters a panic prevailed, and that some were shouting and praying 

 and imagining that the end of the world had come." (M. W. R., 

 32-522.) At Louisville, Ky., March 7, 1911, at about 8 a. m.: dura- 

 tion about half an hour; had been raining moderately, and then 

 hail had fallen. "The intense blackness and general ominous ap- 

 pearance of the storm spread terror throughout the city." (M. W. 



R., 39-345-) 



However, this merger between possible eclipses by unknown dark 

 bodies and commonplace terrestrial phenomena is formidable. 



As to darknesses that have fallen upon vast areas, conventionality 

 is smoke from forest fires. In the U. S. Forest Service Bulletin t 

 No. 117, F. G. Plummer gives a list of eighteen darknesses that 

 have occurred in the United States and Canada. He is one of the 

 primitives, but I should say that his dogmatism is shaken by vibra- 

 tions from the new Dominant. His difficulty, which he acknowl- 

 edges, but which he would have disregarded had he written a decade 

 or so earlier, is the profundity of some of these obscurations. He 

 says that mere smokiness can not account for such "awe-inspiring 

 dark days." So he conceives of eddies in the air, concentrating the 



