The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1885-03-06
COMETS RETURN.

A COMETS RETURN.
Ths Changes It Has Noticed At Each Success
siye Visit-The Power for Good and
EVIL Ascribed to These Celes-
ual Wanderers.
That inquisitive meteor, Enoke's
comet, is visible in the New Year'ssky
says The London Telegraph. What it
has come for, of course, nobody
knows; but it is fortunate for us that
the days of superstition have passed or
it would have found itself regarded in
a very sinister light and its motives
suspected. When the world was
younger men and women had the
greatest possible objection to comets.
They associated them with ''scritch-
OWLS" black cats, which are witches
familiars, and death-watches, with
gloomy omens, uncomfortable augur-
les, and disastrous prognostics. They
were supposed capable of all sorts of
mischief, from turning a pail OF milk
sour to setting the earth on fire. II
CATERS apples withered on the tree it
was all the fruit of the comet; If Gam
mer's goose went lame the same ex-
PLANTATION was enough. Pestilence and
famine were among the recognized
satellites of the brilliant %vagabond,
and emperors and armies have been
terrified by its appearance. The
plague of London, cas- every school
boy knows" was due to the comet of
the year, and in 1868 the appearance
of one of these meteors occassioned q
, remarkable epidemic among cats in
W~estphalia. In 1916 Lima was oyer-
thrown by an earthquake, which was
the result, of course, of the comet that
was then in the sky, and the
same cause led also to the occurrence
of unusually large lights of pigeons in
North America, and to the prevalence
of the .sneezing sickness as ii was
called, in Germany. So, at any rate,
it was said at the time. Even much
later the apparition of n of these
nebulous luminosities led to important
results, for in 1911 the port and claret
yintages were exceptionally excellent;
the number of twins born was unpre-
cedentcd; a shoemaker's wifein Wi.te-
chapel gave birth to four children;
there were no wasps in the autumn;
and flies were all blind that year. All
this and much more was, seventy-four
years ago, gravely attributed to 1.-THE
comet But, of course, the lapse of
seventy-four years makes a great diff
ference. We are much too wise now
to credit any rubbish of the kind, and
anybody who wrote to the papers
saying that he believed shoemakers'
wives in Whitechapel were afflicted
by, comets would be suspected of lu-
macy. AS soon as ''Halley's comet
so called because he predicted its re-
turn every seventy-six years or So
had proved itself to be a regular Wis
itor by reappearing in 1915, the public
began to understand that these shin
ing lights were not the irresponsible
Migrants, the chartered libertines''
that they had been supposed to be.
Instead of being able to loaf about
when and where they chose, they
were in reality chained up, and could
only go round and round at the end Of
their tether, looking very fierce, but
unable to reach anybody SO as to dc
him any harm.
The discovery relieved the mind O.
Europe prodigiously; and since 1885,
there has crept into the popular est
nation of these phenomena a tone O
indifference, not to say levity, which
contrasts very %curiously with the pre-
vious awe. We all know that HALEY.
comet, unless it goes out in the inter
val, will be visible again in the yea
1911, and it is q comfort TO be quit
sure that it will do us NC mischie
when it comes. The poor thing cal
not help perambulating, any NOR,
than the cockchafer at the end of
string which bad little boys are in th,
habit of swinging round their head
'tto find out what o'clock it isl a
they pretend. If, however, it is an in
telligentCcomet, it ought to find mucl
matter for reflection, and, indeed, boil
amazement and amusement also, il
the various stages at which it has, seel
the earth. The long intervals at whicl
it appears give time for very sweeping
and radical changes to take place, ant
the visitor must often feel inclined t
suspect that he has lost his way whe,
he looks down upon a country whicl
he thought he knew well, but which h
can hardly recognize as the same
Thus, for instance, he had left u
Britons fighting with each other hap
PLY enough under Anglo-S Saxon kings
and the next time he looked in upol
England the gentlcfolk were all pre-
tending to be Normans and speakin,
bad French. He was Just in time {
glance down through the trees of th
New forest and see Purkiss, the char
coal-burner, raising up a richly-dress
ed huntsman, with a crown worke,
upon his mantle, who was lying deat
with ar arrow in his heart, and watch
ed the man lift the kings corpse ont
his cart and drive it away toward Win
chester palace. Then it was time fo
the comet to 60 on, and he had to 90
wondering probably what it all meant
When, however, he came round agail
into u sky every n seemed to hav
forgotten all about it, for the king o
, the time and his knights appeared t
have gone mad. They were sellin,
: everything they could and pawnin;
the rest, even to the crown Jewels, t
a fit out soldiers for a distant war, an,
by and by The comet came upon then
fighting the Saracens in the Holy Land
So he understood all about the Cru
sades. Then seventy-six years wen
by, and the Scotch were having a yer
bad time of it, for the English ha
!, given over fighting the Sedan an
were doing their best to conque
Bruce and William Wallace. At h
next visit he could scarcely recogniz
the people, fo,- their shoes had toes s
long that they had to be tied up i
their knees, and their caps had peaH
four feet in length. The next tim
the was shocking. On
half the country wore red roses an
the other half white, and ,vhereve
they met they fought. In 1861 tn
comet was back again, and was i,ni
> zled IN Enow which rr,, " 7.