The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1881-12-01
Comets.

surprising That astronomers mould have
directed renewed attention. to these Gu
rious members of the universe. A great
authority, Mr.. Hind, has just published
Some Investigations upon the comet
named after HALEY, by which he con-
firms the belief that this particular body
really does revisit and circumnavigate
the sun every seventy-five or seventy
six years., This was pretty surely un-
derstood before, but recent historical
notices establish the fact, and those who
live so long may count on seeing Hal
ley's comet about A. ID. 1910. It will
on that occasion come very close, in
deed, to the earth, ten times closer than
at its last appearance, in 1885, closer
even than in 1456. when it almost
frightened Europe and Pope Callixtus
out of their wits. But nobody now en-
tertains any fear of comets, partly by
reason of the information afforded by
science, and partly, no doubt, because
familiarity breeds-if not exactly con-
tempt-a feeling akin to indifference.
Yet we should no more show disrespect
! to comets than to the equator. They're
main mysterious and wonderful, though
they have ceased to be dangerous, and
il people nowadays lightly speculate
upon good vintage because there have
appeared four of these 9 tailed stars
or at worst put down the bad weather
to their influence, this same Halley's
comet reminds US of the painful nerv-
BUSINESS OF our ancestors In B. G.. 12
it swept through the sky, and was be-
lieved by the trembling Romans to be
the soul of Julius Cesar, foreboding
death and ruin. In A. ID. 837 it became
visible during Holy Week, and so
alarmed Louis the Debonnaire that he
passed the night in religious services,
and spent thousands of crowns in ex-
lpiatory masses. In .989 its appearance
was taken as so certain q sign that the
world would come to an end at the close
OF the thousand years that legal docu-
ments used to begin: g Now that the
contamination of things approached 's
The comet came again in AID. 1866,
just before the Norman invasion of En-
gland, and the Bayeux tapestries rep
resent King Harold and his English peo-
pie gazing in horror and dismay upon
its fiery nucleus and streaming tail, to
which general opinion confidently at
tributed afterward the catastrophe of
the Battle of Hastings. Pope Urban 1
Nv. died in July, 1914, and his death
was put down to the comet then show
ing, but in June 1856, .. Hallev's'' wild
wanderer was so near, so brilliant and
so big that all Christendom was
troubled, and Pope Callixtus-already
northumberland it with much
perturbation of mind, to be vision of
the cross; while the Saracen Sultan
proclaimed that it was .sthe scimitar OF
Mahomet' presaging victory On that
date the comet showed train more
than sixty degrees long; and was nearly
as terrible when it returned in 1877, /
= putting many into SO great a fright |
that they died. and making Others.
SEX. Imaginative minds saw upon
this phenomenon figures of weapons
and decapitated heads; hens are said to
have laid eggs with aspicture of the
comet on their shells, and persons of |,
high rank took the warning of such
hodies deeply to eheart -as if heaven
cared SO much for rank and title. The /
brother OF Louis XIV, when q comet l.
came suddenly and the .courtiers were +
discussing the monitions OF the portent +
with skepticism, exclaimed with a sigh:
$ All, gentleman. you can. talk at your {
ease e you like; you are not Kings and
Princes"
IT, however, mankind has ceased to
fear these ethereal pilgrims, it can not
but marvel at the one species of heaven
" bodies which thus fT from .uniYerse
to universe. Comets must have
business and function of some sort.
Something or other, important to all
the planets which they skirt upon their
flight must result from their proximity T
and passage. There is, indeed, already
. ssmoral to their tail - in the exploded
absurdity of the belief that fhey1 come
10 portend the demise OF great men, or
some natural catastrophe. Shakespeare
puts such an idea into the mouth of
Calphurnia, when beggars die there |.
are no portents seen. The heavens
blaze forth the death oil
Princes. We measure the vain igno-
rance of our race when we dwell upon
The hygone superstitions that Halley's
comet could travel 9, 200, 000, 900 OF
miles to betoken Pope's decease or
he landing OF William the Conqueror.
fet will the earth and its inhabitants Is
nave got rid of all such foolish notions I,
when this same silver roamer amonc.
he worlds returns in May, 1910? Il
s bu: slowly that human beings have s,
earned that the universe was not crea-
Jed to furnish spangled curtain at
light for them. Very few have been
he ethereal journeys made by Halley,s
,omet since it was a capital offense
against the church for Gallileo to pro- !
claim that the sun did not 90 round
his infinitesimal bali, and could not be / !,
'tayed, therefore, at Ajalpn or else ,
where. \ len have changed these mar
'ow and eSotistical views for concep-
ions Of the world of life and light lass !,
to ourselves, but Infinitely
more full of splendid possibilities Of ex- ,
stence and boundless developments Of
reative power and glory Many and .
MANY another illusion derived from (
be, feeble and deceitful senses ,
nth aus, at which perhaps generations !
9 come will smile, as we do at Harold +,
2 tho Bayeux tapestries and Pope Cal :
lxtus exercising the comet. Thirty !,
ears, even at the present rate of scien-.l
lie and social progress. may work 1 !
considerable difference in the thoughts !;