In September, 1898, at Remaines, near Ramerupt (Aube), a certain M. Finot, an innkeeper, was standing on his doorstep looking out at a storm, when a flash of lightning followed by a thunderclap sent him flying back into the hall. He remained unconscious for a time, and his sight was affected for ten hours. The extraordinary thing, however, in his case was that he had been a victim of rheumatism until then, and walked with difficulty and only with a stick, and that ever since this occurrence he has been able to do without the stick, and to pursue his avocations quite comfortably. He feels that he has no reason to regret his experience, though he is not anxious to go through anything of the kind again. This kind of electrical phenomenon might be catalogued under the title "Medicinal Lightning."
Now for a case of "Judicial Lightning."
On July 20, 1872, a negro named Norris was hanged in the State of Kentucky for having killed a mulatto, a fellow-workman of his. At the moment of his setting foot upon the scaffold, there was a terrible clap of thunder, and the condemned man was struck dead by lightning. The sheriff was so much moved by the occurrence that he resigned his office.
Let us wind up this little collection of strange cases with another occurrence reported from the United States.
An immense grange had been built by a man named Abner Millikan, an ardent republican, who adorned the front walls of his farm with portraits of MacKinley and Hobart. During a violent storm that broke out, the building was struck by lightning several times, and it looked as though it were enveloped in great sheets of flame. Millikan, who had been at some distance from the spot, rushed thither much alarmed, and found to his relief that no damage had been done. The portraits alone had been destroyed, and—here is the strange detail—the lightning had traced the politicians' features upon the wall.
Certainly lightning plays queer pranks. And I have said nothing yet of the photographs lightning sometimes takes.
Pranks they seem to us, but we may be sure there is some method in their mischievousness. It is the same with women. Women in their caprices are but obeying some law of nature. They are not so capricious as they seem.
These strange facts teach us, anyway, not for the first time, that our knowledge of the universe is still very incomplete, and that its study is worth following up in all its chapters.
We may be certain that electricity exercises a much more important influence in nature than is generally supposed, and that it plays a rôle in our own lives which is still practically unrecognized. In the oppression we feel before the coming of a storm, and the sense of relief we experience when it has passed, we have an instance of the way in which physical and moral influences are apt to blend or overlap.