Washington Began to Think Things.
Washington, Oct. 31 -- A flaming sword appeared in Washington's western sky on e night recently.
Then a second flaming sword. Then a third.
There they hung all night over the city. It was pretty darned terrifying. The next night it happened again. Then more nights. Every night, in fact.
Indeed, it's still happening.
It requires a certain amount of Imagination to see the phenomena as flaming swords, but they're mysterious shafts of light anyway. Even unimaginative people can see them.
After they had appeared for several nights in succession, some of the Imaginative ones began to feel frightened. Washington has a large colored population which is more or less superstitious.
A negro street exhorter preached a number of sermons about the swords. He said they were a dire portent for the capital. They were a puzzle to the most practical of folk.
News that numerous Washingtonians really were scared reached the ears of Professor Asaph Hall of the United States naval observatory.
"Those things," he announced, speaking as an astronomer, "are only searchlights. Don't be foolish."
"What searchlights?" asked everybody.
Professor Hall had to admit that he didn't know. It was pointed out that searchlights bob around. The flaming swords are stationary.
Considerably piqued by popular skepticism toward his theory, Professor Hall did some investigating. Company C, 29th Engineers, Fort Humphreys, Va., he discovered, is surveying a 400-square-mile tract between Quantico and Warrenton , and the triangulating is being done at night by means of searchlights -- a new method of the 29th's own invention, which gives results of the most marvelous mathematical accuracy.
The professor gave this information to a waiting world and -- would you believe it? -- the fundamentalists even yet won't accept it. They declared it's just another scientific attempt to explain the unexplainable. The African portion of the capital's citizenry continues to bubble with excitement and seems likely to keep at it until Company C finishes with its triangulating and turns the lights off.
n1apologies for the disgusting racism?