th in it. So we fear for the soul of Dr. Gray,
because he did not devote his whole life to that one stand that, whether
possible or inconceivable, thousands of fishes had been cast from one
bucket.

So, unfortunately for myself, if salvation be desirable, I look out
widely but amorphously, indefinitely and heterogeneously. If I say I
conceive of another world that is now in secret communication with
certain esoteric inhabitants of this earth, I say I conceive of still
other worlds that are trying to establish communication with all the
inhabitants of this earth. I fit my notions to the data I find. That is
supposed to be the right and logical and scientific thing to do; but it
is no way to approximate to form, system, organization. Then I think I
conceive of other worlds and vast structures that pass us by, within a
few miles, without the slightest desire to communicate, quite as tramp
vessels pass many islands without particularizing one from another. Then
I think I have data of a vast construction that has often come to this
earth, dipped into an ocean, submerged there a while, then going
away--Why? I'm not absolutely sure. How would an Eskimo explain a
vessel, sending ashore for coal, which is plentiful upon some Arctic
beaches, though of unknown use to the natives, then sailing away, with
no interest in the natives?

A great difficulty in trying to understand vast constructions that show
no interest in us:

The notion that we must be interesting.

I accept that, though we're usually avoided, probably for moral reasons,
sometimes this earth has been visited by explorers. I think that the
notion that there have been extra-mundane visitors to China, within what
we call the historic period, will be only ordinarily absurd, when we
come to that datum.

I accept that some of the other worlds are of conditions very similar to
our own. I think of others that are very different--so that visitors
from them could not live here--without artificial adaptations.

How some of them could breathe our attenuated air, if they came from a
gelatinous atmosphere--

Masks.

The masks that have been found in ancient deposits.

Most of them are of stone, and are said to have been ceremonial regalia
of savages--

But the mask that was found in Sullivan County, Missouri, in 1879
(_American Antiquarian_, 3-336).

It is made of iron and silver.

11

One of the damnedest in our whole saturnalia of the accursed--

Becau