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and women were getting their bags & pockets picked, & one poor Chinese laundryman who carried on his business in an adjacent side street, but from whose premises a particularly fine view of the light was obtainable, had such a surging crowd pressing against his shop that the plateglass window collapsed, & the wretched man raised up his voice in protest against his unhappy fate.
Motor cars were "honking" all over the place, & the crowds continued to grow, till Fr. Piquet & the other Marist priests thought the time had arrived for a scientific enquiry, & they asked Fr. Pigot S.J. & Mr. Gale (an astronomer) to investigate, & then they found that a harmless arclight in a street someway off sent some rays into the shiny galvanized iron interior of one of the ventilators on the church roof at such an angle that, to a bystander standing at certain fixed points on the ground in front of the church, & also on one side of it, the reflection seemed like a light proceeding from within, & so a modern miracle was "busted"! A shade was put at a certain angle between the distant lamp & the church, & the mysterious lights vanished!
Adam McKay (Peter Persnurkus of the Sun, & a brother of General McKay of the A.I.F.) writes some amusing nonsense about the lights, so I enclose it. His reference to Billy Hughes & Dr. Mannix reminds