A frantic 

 editor 



" Scios- 

 ophy" 



The Days of a Man 1897 



chologist would not be enhanced by such discov- 

 eries ! 



The excellent editor of The Popular Science 

 Monthly ', William Jay Youmans, was at his wit's 

 end to explain my pleasantry, which he had himself 

 thoroughly understood and enjoyed; he therefore 

 wired me frantically for an authoritative statement 

 of what I was "driving at." But I had simply 

 meant to have a quiet laugh at certain absurdities 

 heralded as science. The experience, however, 

 taught me two lessons: first, that very few people 

 ever read a sensational article through to the end, 

 even much beyond pictures and headlines, and 

 second, that with Dr. Holmes, I should never again 

 "dare to write as funny as I can." 



Yet in further "Proceedings of the Astral Club of 

 Alcalde " I undertook to expose various freak no- 

 tions of pretended science and philosophy. These 

 papers comprise "The Posthom Phantom: A study 

 in the Spontaneous Activity of Shadows"; "The 

 Teaching of Neminism," an exposition of the thesis 

 nihil nemini nocet or "nothing hurts nobody," the 

 assumed motto of a certain school of medicine; 

 "The Plane of Ether," a theosophical analysis of 

 the way to Nirvana; and "Rescue Work in History," 

 a contribution to the theory that time and space 

 are purely relative. To the group of doctrines 

 satirized in these essays I gave the name of Sci- 

 osophy that is, "shadow wisdom." 



An interesting sciosophic phantom of those days, 

 "The Silent City of the Muir Glacier," commanded 

 the attention of tourists in the North. Over the 

 surface of the majestic ice-mass as it descends 

 from Mount Fairweather there hovered at intervals, 

 C 600 3 



