St. Charles Republican intelligencer. (St. Charles [Charles City], Iowa) 1856-1857, 1857-08-06
NUMBER AZ.
A Letter From the Comet.
FREE SPACE, MY OWN ORBIT,
June Is, 1857. J

18th, and from whose vlSlL you autiC-
ipated no pleasant circumstances.
am the comet from whose wrath you
all congratulate yourselves you have
escaped. My purpose in writing this
land l beg you will excuse error in
style and deficits in handwriting, for
free schools are scarce in free space
is to inform you why my visit has
been postponed, and by what accident
am now on my return route to the
sun.
In the first place you are in error as
to my composition. l am not all gas,
or should have given you q good
talking to long ere this, and you would
never have heard the end Of my srgu-
ment had once commenced.
Before the planets existed, there was
but one body where there are now
millions in your solar system. That
body, vast, massive and irregular,
from the attraction of its substance,
generated the principle you call grav-
itation, and rotation followed as con-
sequence. The rotation being very
rapid, and constantly increasing, the
mass soon became incanbescent, pro.
ducing an atmosphere Of high temper
ature. This increased temperature
soon evolved light, and finally this re-
volving body Of fluid matter, radiatiDg
intense heat and light, became what
you now sec it, the sun.
But the form of the sun was origi-
nally very irregular, and the irregu-
larities, little by little, We're ejacula-
ted or thrown of, in immense bodies
from the nascent suns surface. Each
piece became planet, and its posi-
ton in the solar system was deter
mined, of course by the tangential We
locity with which it was detached
from the parent body. The earth on
which You live owes it's birth to this
process, but in the course of ages its
crust has cooled down, and SO become
fit for human habitation. 1t was
among the very first pieces that sepa-
rated itself from the sun, and has,
therefore, had the necessary cooling
time. The other planets are not all
yet sufficiently cool for the purposes
to whicn your orb has pccn sdp1ecteQ,
but will be, by and by--in time to
make a residence for man when, by
the law of destiny, the sun shall re-
absorb the inhabitants of other plan
cts, as it will, one by one, everywhere
it has elected from its BOSOM
Now, gentlemen, what are we COM
cts made Of? you ask. Well, as the
earth and the stars are but masses de-
tached from the suns body, we comets
are portions of the suns luminous at
mosphere, which owing to occasional
arrangements, are also detached at
times, and hurled with inconceivable
velocity into space, our lightncss nec-
cssarily giving us the eccentric orbits
that are our great Characteristic
You all perceive the spots on the sun?
You very properly call them assures
in the suns glowing atmosphere,
through which you can observe the
dark body Of the orb itself. Very
we'll !; those assures are the gaps left
by the portions Of the atmosphere, Of
the sun that have separated themselves
from the mass, aud are now travelling
through space in the shape of comets.
We also expect some day to go back
to the sun. But it is the mission of
each one of us, before we go, to inter-
cept some planet in its path, when it
has existed long enough, and by the
concussion to so disarrange its bal
ance Of centrifugal and centripetal
forces that it must rush instanter into
the sun.
But mark this it was the earth's
turn to be thus blotted from the sys-
TEN last Saturday. And you have es-
capped l was to do the mischief. I
was to be your executor but now,
that is out of the question. The fat
went forth and I prepared to do my
duty, Perhaps you think postponed
it in order to give the King, who rules
over you, (havn't you a King?) .
chance to show his royal omnipotence
by ordering out troops of soldiers to
shoot down all who dare oppose his
royal will. But that is not it. We
feel no interest in such petty despots.
But I'll tell you how the accident oc-
Cured that put me out of the way Of
doing my duty, and compelled me to
postpone until another time what I
ought to have done at that moment.
In the first place, l have a remark
ably thin, weak tail. 1t is long enough
for it extends half a million of miles
behind me, through the blue ether
but then it is SO extremely attenuated
that it cannot be seen more than few
million of miles off, and is therefore
invisible to the people of the EARTH
Well, in consequence Of the wet
weather in the early part of the last
week, this extremity Of mine became
afflicted with the rheumatism, and we
have no r. r. r. up here as q remedy
for that distressing complaint. It
therefore works rather awkwardly-
that is to say, it has not the CELEBRITY
Of movement that should belong to it.
Saturday, unfortunately, as was COM
ing head on to your earth, and had
just got myself in proper line to
meet you at a certain point in your Or
bit where l could do the most mis-
chief, suddenly found myself brought
up, all standing. On looking back, l
saw that my tail had in its awkward
ness, got into the narrow space be-
tween the third and fourth of Saturn's
rings. That saved you! The time it
occupied to extricate myself from that
unpleasant position was just sufficient
to enable the earth to pass that point
where l should have plunged headlong
into her atmosphere. ] did my best
to hurry up. l got my tail loose in
time to heat you up pretty well, q
think you found Saturday, the 18th Of
June, TO be scorcher, or ! am mistar
ken, but my progress was 10 .spid ]