FOX-FIRE 
proached it, and as I stood face to face within a 
few inches of it no vestige of material surface ap- 
peared to sustain it ; it seemed hanging motion- 
less in mid-air. I reached out my hand, which 
momentarily intervened like a black silhouette 
against the 
glow, with 
which it soon came in 
contact. Upon further 
investigation, this proved 
to be the contact of a mere prosaic fence -post, 
which, for some mysterious reason, had been sin- 
gled out for glorification among the ten thousand 
others of its neighbors and transformed into a pil- 
lar of fire. The post was about six inches in diam- 
eter, its summit an unbroken mass of light, which 
extended in more or less broken patches below for 
a distance of six feet, thus suggesting the effect of 
the rippling elongated reflection of a lantern in 
water noticed by my companion, and which would 
