The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page 207 of 376

Page 207 of 376
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

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[p. 169] But our coming inspiration fits in, if we think of the inhabitants of Elvera as having only visited here: having, in hordes as dense as clouds of bats, come here, upon hunting excursions--for mice, | should say: for bees, very likely--or most likely of all, or inevitably, to convert the heathen here--horrified with anyone who would gorge himself with more than a bean at a time; fearful for the souls of beings who would guzzle more than a dewdrop at a time--hordes of tiny missionaries, determined that right should prevail, determining right by their own minutenesses. They must have been missionaries. Only to be is motion to convert or assimilate something else. The idea now is that tiny creatures coming here from their own little world, which may be Eros, though | call it Elvera, would flit from the exquisite to the enormous--gulp of a fair-sized terrestrial animal--half a dozen of them gone and soon digested. One falls into a brook--torn away in a mighty torrent-- Or never anything but conventional, we adopt from Darwin: "The geological records are incomplete." Their flints would survive, but, as to their fragile bodies--one might as well search for prehistoric frost- traceries. A little whirlwind--Elverean carried away a hundred yards--body never found by his companions. They'd mourn for the departed. Conventional emotion to have: they'd mourn. There'd have to be a funeral: there's no getting away from funerals. So | adopt an explanation that | take from the anthropologists: burial in effigy. Perhaps the Elvereans would not come to this earth again until many years later--another distressing occurrence--one little mausoleum for all burials in effigy.