MD3PAD 217-219

[Toby G Levy]

        Mr. LeSpark takes offense to the idea that the only place in
America to turn a profit is New York,  He quotes from Timothy Tox's
Pennsylvaniad. This is the first of many references to Tox and his poem.
Tox is a fictional character and his poem appears to be a nod to John
Barth's "The Sotweed Factor."

        DePugh says that he is thinking of setting up his hypnotism
practise in the wild west. Mr. Lespark says that doctors will run him
out of town. Depugh says that America is supposed to be all about
competition, and his father reenters the room at this point to dispute
this view. He says that the professions of law and medicine need to
create monopolies to maintain high prices for their services.

        Wicks states that monopoly is a form of sloth. Several voices
reply "Rubbish."

        Wicks returns to his narrative, explaining that most of the town
where Emerson lives, Hurworth, believe Emerson to be a practicing
magician. Shepherds have seen shadows at dusk that they think are of
Emerson and his class flying overhead.

        Wicks runs with this, describing Emerson and his class flying
over the countryside to view the outlines of Roman ruins. He talks of
"Ley-Lines" which is an anachronism in as much as the term was invented
in the 1920s by mystic Alfred Watkins. See:

http://www.mystical-www.co.uk/leylines.htm

        Later Dixon will tell Mason about these ley lines and how they
exerted a magnetic influence on Dixon. Mason will reply with a ghost
story of his own about how Bisley Church was cursed with various
afflictions. Dixon says that the ley lines were not malevolent and that
"Flying was indeed quite pleasant, quite pleasant indeed..."

        I am at a loss to understand this flying business in Mason and
Dixon.  I can only attribute it to Wick's vibrant imagination.

vw#58: palimpsest - 1. A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment,
that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing
incompletely erased and often legible. 2. An object, place, or area that
reflects its history.

        Emerson taught that it was possible that the earliest coal mines
in England were discovered by Mithraic cultists who built underground
temples.  Emerson taught of the mystical nature of coal. He quotes the
original latin of Galileo's "Nevertheless it moves," remembered by Dixon
during his witnessing of the Transit of Venus back on page 99.

Toby