Some Cranks and their Crotchets 429 



time, and money," and finally they wrought into 

 its structure the precise date at which the mil- 

 lennium is to begin. All this valuable informa- 

 tion, handed down directly from heaven, was thus 

 securely bottled up in the Great Pyramid for six 

 thousand years or so, awaiting the auspicious day 

 when Mr. Piazzi Smyth should come and draw the 

 cork. Why so much knowledge should have been 

 bestowed upon the architects of King Cheops, only 

 to be concealed from posterity, is a pertinent ques- 

 tion ; and one may also ask, why was it worth 

 while to bring a Piazzi Smyth into the world to 

 reveal it, since plodding human reason had after 

 all by slow degrees discovered every bit of it, except 

 the date of the millennium ? Why, moreover, did 

 the revelation thus elaborately buried in or about 

 B. c. 4000 come just abreast of the scientific know- 

 ledge of A. D. 1864, and there stop short? Is it 

 credible that old Melchizedek knew nothing about 

 the telephone, or the Roentgen ray, or the cholera 

 bacillus ? Our pyramidalists should be more enter- 

 prising, and elicit from their venerable fetish some 

 useful hints as to wireless telegraphy, or the ven- 

 tilation of Pullman cars, or the purification of 

 Pennsylvania politics. Perhaps the last-named 

 problem might vie in difficulty with squaring the 

 circle ! 



