If the person who
observed it had been of a superstitious turn of mind we should have had
here one of the finest and most terrifying ghost stories on the entire
record, which would have made an exceptionally splendid show in the
'Transactions of the Society for Psychical Research.' Unfortunately,
however, he was only a man of science, ungifted with the precious dower
of poetical imagination; so he stupidly called it a remarkable
fire-ball, measured the ground carefully like a common engineer, and
sent an account of the phenomenon to that far more prosaic periodical,
the 'Quarterly Journal of the Meteorological Society.' Another splendid
apparition thrown away recklessly, for ever!
There is a curious form of electrical discharge, somewhat similar to the
fire-ball but on a smaller scale, which may be regarded as the exact
opposite of the thunderbolt, inasmuch as it is always quite harmless.
This is St. Elmo's fire, a brush of lambent light, which plays around
the masts of ships and the tops of trees, when clouds are low and
tension great. It is, in fact, the equivalent in nature of the brush
discharge from an electric machine. The Greeks and Romans looked upon
this lambent display as a sign of the presence of Castor and Pollux,
'fratres Helenae, lucida sidera,' and held that its appearance was an
omen of safety, as everybody who has read the 'Lays of Ancient Rome'
must surely remember. The modern name, St. Elmo's fire, is itself a
curiously twisted and perversely Christianised reminiscence of the great
twin brethren; for St.
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