The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-09-29
THE COMETS TALE.

THE COMETS TALE
When Rip Van Wrinkle got back to the vii
lage of Falling Waters, after his sleep of
twenty years, he was much one who had
dropped down from another sphere.
great war had been fought, his old comrades,
some of them, had fallen in battles that he
had never heard of and nearly all were dead.
The children that he had handled on his
knee, or, laughing. carried on his back the
day before he went 10 the Catsldlls, were
..m only as a tradition The world
turns over a great many times in
even score of years, and its
people and their affairs are changed
almost beyond recognition. Just now an
old acquaintance is coming back earthward
after an absence of seventy-one years His
tory gives MS his name, and has so faithfully
described him that though few are living
who saw him three-score and ten years ago,
he will be readily recognized. The comet of
1912 is now sauntering across the pasture
lands that environ the earth and in a few
over in in fhes tbs !lli same path path he went
nineteenth century. Where he has
been meanwhile and how many mil
lions of miles he has travelled are
matters of interesting conjecture Out yon-
der somewhere, beyond the clouds of stars
that rise like dust between us and the deeper
IF no nov hkad
with other comets, hirted and PLAYED with
them, or entertained gathering of celestial
bodies with fish stories OF what he saw in this
part OF the heavens when he made the grand
he got out of our range of vision he stopped
and loitered on the way. YER
liable truant from the celestial school,
where his fellows were kept
in that half-delightf1l slavery that seems so
irksome, but which is always recalled with a
regret that it did not last forever. This old
nomad Of the skies may have mischievously
plucked at the trains of his fellows, mad in
the joy of meeting after so long a separation,
and now, in excess of good feeling, he is tax
ing another plunge down through the depths
of the jeweled sea of the universe, to again
whirl around the sum- and as rapidly
speed away again into the vastly soli-
tudes that lie so very far away But
with all his travels, with all the star-dust
in his dazzling train, he is recognized and
known. welcome awaits this gay prodi-
gal of the skies, and as he swings in mighty
strides above our heads thousand million
eyes will follow him in his fight.
But while he is unchanged and all the
spheres of the solar system are still lazily
swinging in their old-time orbits, sad dogs in
the tread mill that never tires in its ceaseless
round, the affairs of earth have
changed until this long-haired
sleeper from the celestial Catskills will hard
ly know US when he, gets here. Since he left
us, seventy-one years ago. the United States
has fought three great wars-one against the
mother country, one against Mexico, and
third the most disastrous of all, among its
own people. From population of but
13,0000 900 the country has now 100000,
From stage coaches laundering along in
banks of sitting dust, the inhabitants of
earth have gone to speeding in chariots of
fire. From ships that drifted at the mercy
Of tide and storm, the sea
is peopled with palaces that defy the ele-
,nents. On the American continent are hun
..reds of cities that had not been dreamed of
seventy years ago. The home of the red
nan and the haunt of the wild beast have
oeen driven westward a thousand miles. In
he Eastern hemisphere the metamorphosis
las been scarcely less marked. Republics
ave risen and fallen, and empires have suf-
Tered many vicisstudes. When this comet
asst viewed the earth the first Napoleon
las in the zenith of his power. All
Europe was under his feet, and there was
s,ot q ruler from the Baltic to the Mediter-
ranean, from Cairo to London, who did not
car him. His ambition was boundess, his
sbility to conquer apparently illimitable.
The abdication at Fontainbleau was yet two
gears away, and the terrible hundred days,