continued to pour from human beings: but the bleeding statues stopped, or statements that statues were bleeding stopped. However, wherever the water was coming from, it continued to flow from the appearing-point in the Walsh boy’s room. In the Tipperary Star, September 25, the estimate is that, in about one month, one million persons had visited Pilgrimsville. To some degree the excitement kept up the rest of the year.
They were threading terror with their peaceful processions. They marched through “a terrible toll of bloodshed—wild scenes at Nenagh—the Banshaw Horror.” Past burned and blackened fields in which corpses were lying, streamed these hundreds of thousands: chanting their song of the long, long way; damning the farmers, who were charging them two shillings apiece for hard-boiled eggs; praying, raiding chicken houses, telling their beads, stealing bicycles. “Mr. John McDonnell gave a pilgrim a lift, and was robbed of £250.”
But one of these detachments enters a town. In another street, a man runs from a house—“My God! I’m shot!” Not far away—the steady sound of tramping pilgrims. These flows of beings are as mysterious as the teleportations of substances. They may mean an organic control, or maintenance of balance, even in a part that is diseased with bombs and ambuscades and arson.
But it is impossible, except to the hopelessly pious, to consider, with anything like veneration, any such maintenance of a balance, because, if a god of order be conceived of, also is he, or it, a god of murder.
But, regarded aesthetically, sometimes there are effects that are magnificent.
“Bloody Sunday in the County Cork!” But, upon this day, somewhere upon every road in Ireland is maintained a rhythm.
Somewhere, a lorry of soldiers is moving down a road. Out of bushes come bullets, and the sides of the car are draped with a droop of dead men. Not far away, men and women and children are marching. Along the roads of distracted Ireland—steady pulsations of people and people and people.
7
Nose in the mud, and the bend of a thing to the ground. There are postures from which life is acting to escape: one of them, the embryonic crouch; another, whether in the degradation of worship, or as a convenience in eating grass, the bend of a neck to the ground. The all-day gnaw of the fields. But the eater of meat is released from the munch. One way to broaden horizons is to climb a tree, but another way is to stand on one’s own hind legs, away from the grass. A Bernard Shaw dines on hay, and still looks behind for a world that’s far ahead.
These are the disgusts for vegetarians, felt by the planters of Ceylon, in July, 1910. Very likely, I am prejudiced, myself. Perhaps I think that it is gross and brutal to eat anything at all. Why stop at vegetarianism? Vegetarianism is only a semi-ideal. The only heavenly thing to do is to do nothing. It is gross and brutal and animal-like to breathe.
We contribute to the records of strange alarms. There was one in Ceylon. Gigantic vegetarians were eating trees.
Millions of foreigners, big African snails (Achatena fulica), had suddenly appeared, massed in the one small district of Kalutara, near Colombo. Shells of the largest were six inches long. One of them that weighed three quarters of a pound was exhibited at the Colombo Museum. They were crowded, or massed, in one area of four square miles. One of the most important of the data is that this was in one of the mostly thickly populated parts of Ceylon. But nothing had been seen of these “gigantic snails,” until suddenly trees turned knobby with the monsters. It was as surprising as it would be, in New York, going out one morning, finding everything covered with huge warts. In Colombo was shown a photograph of a tree trunk, upon the visible part of which 227 snails were counted. The ground was as thick with them as were the trees.
They were explained.
So were the periwinkles of Worcester: but we had reasons
They were threading terror with their peaceful processions. They marched through “a terrible toll of bloodshed—wild scenes at Nenagh—the Banshaw Horror.” Past burned and blackened fields in which corpses were lying, streamed these hundreds of thousands: chanting their song of the long, long way; damning the farmers, who were charging them two shillings apiece for hard-boiled eggs; praying, raiding chicken houses, telling their beads, stealing bicycles. “Mr. John McDonnell gave a pilgrim a lift, and was robbed of £250.”
But one of these detachments enters a town. In another street, a man runs from a house—“My God! I’m shot!” Not far away—the steady sound of tramping pilgrims. These flows of beings are as mysterious as the teleportations of substances. They may mean an organic control, or maintenance of balance, even in a part that is diseased with bombs and ambuscades and arson.
But it is impossible, except to the hopelessly pious, to consider, with anything like veneration, any such maintenance of a balance, because, if a god of order be conceived of, also is he, or it, a god of murder.
But, regarded aesthetically, sometimes there are effects that are magnificent.
“Bloody Sunday in the County Cork!” But, upon this day, somewhere upon every road in Ireland is maintained a rhythm.
Somewhere, a lorry of soldiers is moving down a road. Out of bushes come bullets, and the sides of the car are draped with a droop of dead men. Not far away, men and women and children are marching. Along the roads of distracted Ireland—steady pulsations of people and people and people.
7
Nose in the mud, and the bend of a thing to the ground. There are postures from which life is acting to escape: one of them, the embryonic crouch; another, whether in the degradation of worship, or as a convenience in eating grass, the bend of a neck to the ground. The all-day gnaw of the fields. But the eater of meat is released from the munch. One way to broaden horizons is to climb a tree, but another way is to stand on one’s own hind legs, away from the grass. A Bernard Shaw dines on hay, and still looks behind for a world that’s far ahead.
These are the disgusts for vegetarians, felt by the planters of Ceylon, in July, 1910. Very likely, I am prejudiced, myself. Perhaps I think that it is gross and brutal to eat anything at all. Why stop at vegetarianism? Vegetarianism is only a semi-ideal. The only heavenly thing to do is to do nothing. It is gross and brutal and animal-like to breathe.
We contribute to the records of strange alarms. There was one in Ceylon. Gigantic vegetarians were eating trees.
Millions of foreigners, big African snails (Achatena fulica), had suddenly appeared, massed in the one small district of Kalutara, near Colombo. Shells of the largest were six inches long. One of them that weighed three quarters of a pound was exhibited at the Colombo Museum. They were crowded, or massed, in one area of four square miles. One of the most important of the data is that this was in one of the mostly thickly populated parts of Ceylon. But nothing had been seen of these “gigantic snails,” until suddenly trees turned knobby with the monsters. It was as surprising as it would be, in New York, going out one morning, finding everything covered with huge warts. In Colombo was shown a photograph of a tree trunk, upon the visible part of which 227 snails were counted. The ground was as thick with them as were the trees.
They were explained.
So were the periwinkles of Worcester: but we had reasons
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