Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1875-02-10


| Chickadee dee dee dee
- Boston Journal
| -
The Transit Of Venus and the Crack Of
.H Doom.
From the N. Y. World
If the tentative first computations of
the Suns distance from earth, based on
the late observations of the transit of
Venus across his disc, shall hereafter be
justified in the final tests; if indeed that
orb is slowly greatening in mems eyes,
then astronomers and plain people will
alike be driven to the conclusion that
the earth, and all mankind who scratch
its rind, are going to hellish conditions
of temperature if not OF moral tene-
ment, with velocity which devout
astronomers ought to carefully COM
pute, in time to give their fellow
creatures space for repentance.
If, since Encke in 1761 observed the
last pair of transits, we have come T.
600, 900 miles carer the central fur
nace-tire which warns our little coterie
of planetary trifes, it will take only
l 40 years more for us to reach that
shaving, and be radiated away into IL.
hmltable space in mere molecular vi.
brations.
That is the significance of what scien-
lists call an increase of the solar paral-
lax; and such are the lawful consequences
of believing the dispatch of our London
correspondent who this morning invites
us to turn our eyes away from the
transitory and trivial fates of the King
of Spain, the Pope of Rome, Bismarck,
Grant and Kellogg, and to survey the
ultimate destiny of mankind. Nor
of mankind alone; for if we are tumbling
in upon the Sun, who doubts that all
the Jacks and ellis of Mars and Jupl-
ter Saturn and Uranus, will como
tumbling after. There is little comfort
and no consolation in the thought; but
the sense of Justice is satisfied, if our
planetary world must go to pot SO per-
emptorily, to know that our reighbors
shall all likewise perish. b r -.s.--.g q
It is discouraging to what we call civ
ilization, which is very slow and la
borious process, to learn that not more
time than men have spent in substitu-
ting Christian Greek for policy itera-
ture and art, will be consumed in oblit-
Grating that and all other differences by
process which we can neither hinder
nor help. It is most melancholy, if
our present manhood has, with infinite
| fatigue, lifted itself up from all ances-
trail apehood only to find that we had
already missed our way when our fore
father ascidians failed to take the sala-
mander track; for it is utterly utopian
to hope that in the next thousand years
or SO the human race could adjust itself
to steadily warming environment and
transmit TO its posterity an increasing
capacity either by continuance to resist
like Herring's safes the temperature
of Tophet, Or by stubborn wills
to still cohere as moral beings
while our atomic constituents
are parting from each other like the
elements Of gunpowder in bursted
| columbiad. Much as we have hoped
from the progress of the human race,
we can never ask the readers of The
World, Or the other inhabitants of the
planet of the same name, to put such
strain upon their endeavors It is of
no use. We had rather advise them to
omit to provide any posterity for such
fate. than exhort them to educate that
posterity to put up with such condi-
| lions. II the poets, now reinforced by
the astronomers, were right when they
sang 49,,
| ''Our little systems have their day.
| They have their day and cease to be, F."
and that ebay" is to last no longer
| than LAO years ere it ends in the solar
cataclysm which The Worlds special
correspondentand astronomer prefgure,
then it becomes us as human beings,
rather than
g Be shrivelled in a fruitless fire."
to foil the malignity of Fate, and, by
universal Hari Kari, or by learning the
peaceful lesson of Lysistrata, to sur
render nothing but the long, cold ashes
Of childless race to the cruelty of such
a predestinate cremation. In this man
ner mankind would cease with dignity,
whatever became of the solar system,
I and SO make the best atonement in
their power for the original sin of adj
iusting themselves to bear range of
temperature from 40 deg. below to
100 deg. above zero, Fahrenheit, in
stead of temperature of 100000 deg.
Centigrade. - .., sreIm u.
But not before the year 1882 will the
World pause in it's mission of convert
ing all the people of the United States
to the best political doctrine, nor even
then unless the transit of Venus in that
year shall confirm the portentous COM
putation of the transit of 1874. We
for or part snail be slow to set the
great globe itself so unsafe precedent
for boiling the track in which hitherto,
like the World in it's helicoidal orbit,
rising upward, always higher,"S ~
it has revolved with sobriety, modera-
ton and reasonable punctuality.
! ] The Windsor Castle of Mexico. 80