Year: 1878

| On the OuGSklrUS Oh the ClIy OF MOI
wich, perched on the bluff overlooking
the New London Northern Railroad, is
a nondescript structure of plank, stone,
brick and unhewn timber, looking as
little like house as any thing under
the sun. 1t is habitation, however,
and its tenant is person whom the en-
tire neighborhood looks upon with awe.
His name is Lyman Grinnel. He is an
eccentric of the first order. For twenty
eight years he has dwelt in his curious
abode. He was once sailor, and to-
day is hermit with theories of char
acter as strange as he is himself. When
found by a Mercury representative, he
was seated on boat in front of his door,
skinning and quartering the carcass of a
large cat, with the gravity of butcher
dissecting a large bullock. The plain
tive meous of FIVE other cats confined in
a chicken coop close at hand echoed
sadly on the summer air. In person he
was man of over sixty, bent with
rheumatism, with rugged, weather.
beaten face, scrubby white hair and
beard. After disme embering his feline
victim and putting the fragments in a
pot, he built a fire, set the kettle on it,
and signiied that he was at the re-
porter's service. At intervals during
the interview he interrupted himself to
replenish bowl in the cat-coop with a
strange looking liquid from bottle.
As long as this liquid lasted the cats re-
NAMED quiet; when it was gone they
mewed, apparently for more.


"I am glad to meet you," he said; al
frequently find the Mercury articles Of a
scientific and theoretical nature that are
very interesting. always cut them
out and paste them up, as you see."
His hut is papered with newspaper
clippings, among which number from
the Mercury figure conspicuously. He
went on: None of them agree with
me, to be sure, but they all predict a
tremendous natural revolution to be at
hand. So do /. They suggest various
ways in which this revolution is to be
brought about. Now, am going to tell
you the true one. Between now and
1882 the world is going to be destroyed
by a flood of hot water. The flood is to
last exactly thirty days, from sunrise to
sunrise. AS soon as it ends new earth
is going to appear; only instead of being
like it is now, every thing is going to be
reversed. The poles, for instance, are
going to be in the tropics, and the
tropics where the Arctic regions are
now"


"But what is your theory for this GER
tainly remarkable change?" demanded
the amazed reporter.


al haint none. It's on account of gen.
eral badness, you see. The world is rot
ten. Things is all wrong. was told
that in a revelation. 1t came to me
while was mate of the whaler Polar
Circle in the South Seas in 1849. / was
at Tahiti and went to look at the volcano
there-Mauna Loa. slept on the edge
of the crater, and heard what I'm tell
ing you in a dream, or rather vision"
| 1t was a voice. l heard it afterward
down in Peru and Chill, and once it
spoke to me in Pernambuco. Since I've
been living here it comes once month
regularly, with the change Of the moon"


But what does it say?" 1t told
me first that the earth was to be billed
up. A food of hot water is going to
come from all the volcanoes at once. A
shower of hot stones and lava is going to
fall into the sea and heat it, too. They
will raise the level of the ocean, too, and
big tidal wave will sweep over every
thing. Hot springs will burst out every
where, and volcanoes will fill up the sea.
So where water is now will be land, and
vice versa. o. I've got it down fine.
Here's a map of how things will be" !"
Here he produced from a battered sea-
chest very neatly executed chart on
the Mercator projection. In it the out
line of the present conformation of the
earth had been strictly followed; but
water everywhere took the place of land
and land the place of water. Cape
| Florida was a vast inlet, Gibraltar a
large harbor; Great Britain, Ireland
and Australia, colossal inland seas,
while the great lakes figure as chain
of enormous islands connected by three
like causeways. The tropic of Cancer
and Capricorn took the place of the
Arctic and Antarctic Circles. The
chart was not scaled into degrees of
latitude and longitude. Its author said !:


"I don't know exactly yet where the
poles are going to be. I only know that the
North and South Poles will be somewhere
on the equator The voice will tell me
where soon, and will warn me when to
look out for the flood. Then Pll just
have time to scale my chart and SO have
something to steer course by. There's
my boat there, I've got water for forty
days in it. That greenish paint is
asbestos paint. invented it myself. 1t
will keep the seams from starting with
the heat, you know. Then here's my
cold-air generator, itis an improvement
on portable ice-machine which l made
myself. With it / will surround myself
with enough pure air to breathe in spite
of the hot vapor from the boiling water.
The thing is automatic. l amt going
to describe it; it's my invention, you
know, and haven't got it patented yet.
1t beats the Keely motor all hollow"


Here the recluse went to give his cats
drink, and the reporter" examined the
machine, which was simply contri-
vance for making ice on the ammoniacal
fume system, with rubber tube at
tachment like tangled boa constructor
and a bellows-like termination. The
automatic attachment was complicated
arrangement of ratchets, cog-wheels and
wire springs, which resembled nothing
but clock factory after an explosion.
Detected in the attempt to put the thing
in motion, the Mercury representative
hastened to apologize, but the inventor
received his excuses with grim frown,
and it was only with difficulty that any
further information could be extracted
from him. Allusion to the cats drew
him out, however, and he stated that
salvation from the impending deluge il
only open to people with whom cat meal
, is steady diet.
"The voice told me so," he said
Goats is the only pure animals. AL
other meat is unnatural. Vegetables arr
only made for brutes. Cats are th'
} thing, and they are sent to us in sucl
numbers as chance to save ourselves
3 But the world is blind. 1t won't learn
SO it must suffer. When / first cam
! here ate any thing ] could get. Fe
l the last four years l have eat only cat
|. meat. The boys bring 'em to me from
I town. I pay ten cents apiece for 'em