The Portland daily press., 1893-01-07
cRAzeD BY THE COMET.

The Prospective Arrival of BieIa's Orb
Left It's Influence Behind.
There are wise people to-day who be-
iieve that the proximity of q comet to
the earth brings with it various diseases,
mental as well as physical disturbances.
81 never took any stock in this comet
business" said a practical friend Of
mine. GIVE seen several comets in my
time and read all sorts of rot about
them, very little of which believed.
But this comet
He paused and drew me away from
the crowd. Having glanced about him
uneasily, he continued:
''This comet nearly drove my wifi
crazyl Yes, sir; fact! And she's nearly
driven me crazy. Do you-have you
seen anything queer about me lately?'
told him had not-that he looked
as sane as his average fellow mortal.
"Well," he resumed, 1--WE run a
mighty narrow chance, tell you. But
she's cured now. If this internal comet
hadn't gone away just when it did
should have been locked up by this time.
"My wife is ordinarily quiet little
woman and takes no particular interest
in the newspapers except when there is
a mysterious murder case like the great
Maybrick poisoning case or the Carlyle
Harris case, or something like that
something mysterious, you know. Then
she grabs the newspapers and reads up
On it, and thinks about it, and talks about
it, and advances theories about it, and
thoroughly masters it, hanging the de-
PENDANT every day. She can find more
clews than the whole metropolitan po-
lice force. She pounces down upon me
at breakfast with her theories and clews
and suspicious, and as these are changed
after reading the evening papers l get
another dose at night.
''But this comet! She has been
stricken-yes, sir, stricken-by the mys-
FERROUS influence the comet is said to
have upon the human mind! It was
manifest in her the very day she read
the dispatches and the differences of
learned opinion as to whose comet it
was and its probable orbit, its distance,
the number Of sparks in it's tail, etc. If
it had been straightforward comet
and come right out where everybody
could see it and where everybody ex-
pected it, she would have been all Sc
rene. But the mystery Of the thing, the
uncertainty, the disagreement of astron-
omers-that settled her. She began
reading up on the comet from the news
papers. As every newspaper differed.
and every authority in every newspaper
differed with every other authority in
that or any other newspaper, she found
herself suddenly plunged into whirl
Of excitement.
''She sprang comet on me every hour
in the day and swept the heavens with
pinch opera glass every night. She
had sort of idea that redhot chunks of
iron were liable to drop into our fiat.
She went up on the roof to see the me-
teoric shower and got locked out up
there by the janitor. If hadn't missed
her she'd have been frozen to death. She
got up ten times night to look out, and
once she said she smelled sulphur. She
slipped out of bed the first thing in the
morning and read what the papers said
about the comet, then went back to bed
again. When l sat down to breakfast
with my paper she was loaded for me.
You could see hazy red light hanging
over the Jersey horizon from our win
dews, and she had those windows open
SO much at night we all got colds and
snuifles. On Sunday night the sky over
there was bright red at intervals. Well.
she was just wild. Then she smellei
the sulphur in the air. never saw
woman get so excited. She scarcely
slept wink.
''The next morning, when she found
that it was the Jersey meadows on fire
and that she hadn't seen the comet at
all, she was the most disguised woman
you ever saw. She won't touch a news
paper now. She says the newspapers
are the biggest liars-next to the astron-
emerson earth. If l say comet at
her now she is as mad as hornet.
''In my opinion, it's been confound-
ed fraud all along. This man Biela, Or
Belly, ought to get six months on the
island. New York Herald.