The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1900-11-30
Mr.. Fotheringay struggled to get to

Mr.. Fotheringay struggled to get to
his feet in vain and after one failure
remained on all tours, holding on. He
surveyed the moonlit world to leeward,
with the tails of his Jacket streaming
over his head. There's something Sc
riously wrong said Mr.. Fotheringay,
"and what it is goodness knows"
Far and wide nothing was visible in
the white glare through the haze of
dust that drove before screaming
gale but tumbled masses of earth and
heaps of inchoate ruins, no trees, no
houses, no familiar shapes, only will
derness of disorder, vanishing at last
into the darkness beneath the whirling
columns and streamers, the lightnings
and thunderings of swiftly rising
storm. Near him in the livid glare
was something that once might have
been an elm tree, smashed mass of
splinters, shivered from boughs to
base, and further q twisted mass of
iron Orders, only too evidently the
viaduct, rose out of the piled confu-
sion.
You see when Mr.. Fotheringay had
arrested the rotation of the solid globe
he had made no stipulation concerning
the trifing movables upon it's surface,
and the earth spins so fast that the
surface at it's equator is travelling at
rather more than 1000 miles an hour
and in these ATTITUDES at more than
half that pace, so that the village and
Mr.. Maydig and Mr.. Fotheringay and
everybody and everything had been
jerked violently forward at about nine
miles per secondhand is to say, much
more violently than if they had been
fired out of cannon, and every hui
man being, every living creature, every
house and every tree, all the world as
we know it, had been so jerked and
smashed and utterly destroyed. That
was all.
These things Mr.. Fotheringay did
not, of course, fully appreciate. But
he perceived that his miracle had mis-
carried, and with that great disgust
of miracles came upon him. He was
in darkness now, for the clouds had
swept together and blotted out his
momentary glimpse of the moon, and
the air was full of ftful struggling,
tortured wraiths of hail. A great roar
ing of wind and waters filled earth
and sky, and peering under his hand
through the dust and sleet to wind
ward he saw by the play of the light
nings vast wall of water pouring
toward him.
o. Nv al
gays feeble voice amid the elemental
uproar. Here, Maydig!
"Stopy' cried Mr.. Fotheringay to the
advancing water. ooh, for goodness
sake, stop!
"Just moment" said Mr.. Fotherin-
gay to the lightnings and thunder.
"Stop just a moment while l collect
my thoughts.
"And now what shall do?" he said.
what shall do? Lord, I wish May
dig was about.
II know said Mr. Fotheringay,
"and for goodness sake let's have it
right this time
He remained on all tours, leaning
against the wind, very intent to have
everything right.
"Ah," he said, 'let nothing of what
I'm going to order happen until I say
of! Lord, wish I'd thought of that
before
He lifted his little voice against the
whirlwind, shouting louder and louder
In the vain desire to hear himself
speak. 1'Now, then, here goes. Mind
about that what said just now. In
the first place, when all I've got to
say is done, let me lose my miraculous
power Let my will become just like
anybody else's will and all these dan
gerous miracles be stopped. I don't
like them. I'd rather I didn't work
them ever so much. That's the first
thing. And the second is, let me back
just before the miracles begin. Let
everything be just as it was before
that blessed lamp turned up. It's a
big job, but it's the last. Have you
got it? No more miracles; everything
as 1T was-me back in the Long Dragon
just before 1 drank my half pint
That's it. Yes"
He dug his fingers into the mold,
closed his eyes and said, "Offv
Everything became perfectly still.
He perceived that he was standing
erect.
$50 you think" said voice.
He opened his eyes. He was in the
bar of the Long Dragon arguing about
miracles with Teddy Beamish. He
had vague sense of some great
thing forgotten that instantaneously
passed. You see that, except for the
loss of his miraculous powers, every
thing was back as it had been. His
mind and memory therefore were now
just as they had been at the time when
this story began, so that he knew alb
solutely nothing of all that is told
here, and, among other things, of
course he still did not believe in mira
cles.
81 tell you that miracles, properly
speaking, can't possibly happen" he
said, whatever you IKE TO nolo, anu
I'm prepared to prove it up to the
hilt."
THAT'S what you think" said Teddy
Beamish. prove it if you can.'
"Looky here, Mr.. Beamish," said Mr..
Fotheringay, "let us clearly understand