region of clockmakers, gunsmiths and inspired tinkers,
so his trip out to the Western Reserve was just a personal expression of Yankee
migration generally. This strip of Ohio due west of Connecticut had for years,
since before American independence, been considered part of Connecticut’s
original land grant. So despite days and nights of traveling, Merle had an
eerie sense of not having left Connecticut—same plain gablefront houses,
white Congregational church steeples, even stone fences—more Connecticut,
just shifted west, was all.
Merle arrived to find the “Forest
City” obsessed by the pursuit of genial desperado Blinky Morgan, who was being
sought for allegedly murdering a police detective while trying to rescue a
member of his gang who’d been picked up on a furrobbery charge. Newsboys cried
the tale, and rumors flew like bugs in summer. Detectives swaggered everywhere,
their black stiff hats shining like warrior helmets of old. Chief Schmitt’s
bravos in blue were detaining and subjecting to lengthy and mostly aimless
questioning anybody whose looks they didn’t care much for, which took in a wide
piece of the population, including Merle, who was stopped on Rockville Street
as he was heading out toward the Case Institute.
“What’s in the wagon, son?”
“Nothin much. You’re sure welcome to
look.”
“Well this is refreshing, usually we
get Blinky jokes.”
Merle went off into a long and
confused description of the MichelsonMorley experiment, and his interest in it,
which was not shared by the policemen, who began to grow distant, and presently
truculent.
“Another candidate for Newburgh here,
looks like.”
“Well, let’s do a check. Crossed
eyes, protruding tongue, Napoleon hat?” They were talking about the Northern
Ohio Insane Asylum, a few miles southeast of town, in which currently were
lodged some of the more troublesome of the scientific cranks Cleveland these
days had been filling up rapidly with, enthusiasts from everywhere in the
nation and abroad for that matter, eager to bathe in the radiance of the
celebrated Ætherdrift experiment in progress out at Case. Some were inventors
with lightengines that could run a bicycle all day but at nightfall stopped
abruptly, causing the bike to fall over with you on it, if you weren’t careful.
Some claimed that light had a consciousness and personality and could even be
chatted with, often revealing its deeper secrets to those who approached it in
the right way. Groups of these could be observed in Monumental Park at sunrise,
sitting in the dew in uncomfortable positions, their lips moving inaudibly.
There were diet faddists who styled themselves Lightarians, living on nothing
but light, even setting up labs they thought of as kitchens and concocting
meals from light recipes, fried light, fricaseed light, light à la mode, calling
for different types of lamp filament and colors of glass envelope, the Edison
lamp being brand new in those days but certainly not the only design under
study. There were light addicts who around sunset began to sweat and itch and
seclude themselves in toilets with portable electric lanterns. Some spent most
of their time at telegraph offices squinting at long scrolls of mysteriously
arrived “weather reports,” about weather not in the atmosphere but in the
luminiferous Æther. “Yes it’s all here,” said Ed Addle, one of the regulars at
the Oil Well Saloon, “Ætherwind speed, Ætheric pressure, there are instruments
to measure those, even an analogy to temperature, which depends on the
ultramicroscopic vortices and how energetically they interact . . . . ”
Merle came back with another round of
beers. “How about humidity?”
“Controversial,” said Ed. “What, in
the Æther, would occupy the place of watervapor in the air? Some of us believe
it is Vacuum. Minute droplets of nothing at all, mixed in with the prevailing
Ætheric medium. Until the saturation point is reached, of course. Then there
so his trip out to the Western Reserve was just a personal expression of Yankee
migration generally. This strip of Ohio due west of Connecticut had for years,
since before American independence, been considered part of Connecticut’s
original land grant. So despite days and nights of traveling, Merle had an
eerie sense of not having left Connecticut—same plain gablefront houses,
white Congregational church steeples, even stone fences—more Connecticut,
just shifted west, was all.
Merle arrived to find the “Forest
City” obsessed by the pursuit of genial desperado Blinky Morgan, who was being
sought for allegedly murdering a police detective while trying to rescue a
member of his gang who’d been picked up on a furrobbery charge. Newsboys cried
the tale, and rumors flew like bugs in summer. Detectives swaggered everywhere,
their black stiff hats shining like warrior helmets of old. Chief Schmitt’s
bravos in blue were detaining and subjecting to lengthy and mostly aimless
questioning anybody whose looks they didn’t care much for, which took in a wide
piece of the population, including Merle, who was stopped on Rockville Street
as he was heading out toward the Case Institute.
“What’s in the wagon, son?”
“Nothin much. You’re sure welcome to
look.”
“Well this is refreshing, usually we
get Blinky jokes.”
Merle went off into a long and
confused description of the MichelsonMorley experiment, and his interest in it,
which was not shared by the policemen, who began to grow distant, and presently
truculent.
“Another candidate for Newburgh here,
looks like.”
“Well, let’s do a check. Crossed
eyes, protruding tongue, Napoleon hat?” They were talking about the Northern
Ohio Insane Asylum, a few miles southeast of town, in which currently were
lodged some of the more troublesome of the scientific cranks Cleveland these
days had been filling up rapidly with, enthusiasts from everywhere in the
nation and abroad for that matter, eager to bathe in the radiance of the
celebrated Ætherdrift experiment in progress out at Case. Some were inventors
with lightengines that could run a bicycle all day but at nightfall stopped
abruptly, causing the bike to fall over with you on it, if you weren’t careful.
Some claimed that light had a consciousness and personality and could even be
chatted with, often revealing its deeper secrets to those who approached it in
the right way. Groups of these could be observed in Monumental Park at sunrise,
sitting in the dew in uncomfortable positions, their lips moving inaudibly.
There were diet faddists who styled themselves Lightarians, living on nothing
but light, even setting up labs they thought of as kitchens and concocting
meals from light recipes, fried light, fricaseed light, light à la mode, calling
for different types of lamp filament and colors of glass envelope, the Edison
lamp being brand new in those days but certainly not the only design under
study. There were light addicts who around sunset began to sweat and itch and
seclude themselves in toilets with portable electric lanterns. Some spent most
of their time at telegraph offices squinting at long scrolls of mysteriously
arrived “weather reports,” about weather not in the atmosphere but in the
luminiferous Æther. “Yes it’s all here,” said Ed Addle, one of the regulars at
the Oil Well Saloon, “Ætherwind speed, Ætheric pressure, there are instruments
to measure those, even an analogy to temperature, which depends on the
ultramicroscopic vortices and how energetically they interact . . . . ”
Merle came back with another round of
beers. “How about humidity?”
“Controversial,” said Ed. “What, in
the Æther, would occupy the place of watervapor in the air? Some of us believe
it is Vacuum. Minute droplets of nothing at all, mixed in with the prevailing
Ætheric medium. Until the saturation point is reached, of course. Then there
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