Connecticut western news., 1893-01-05
CRAZED BY THE COMET.
The Prospective Arrival of Biela's Or
 Left Ita Infiuence Behind.

The Prospective Arrival of Biels's Orb
 Left It's Influence Behind.
 There are wise people to-day who be- heve that the proximity of a comet to the earth brings with it various diseases. mental as we'll as physical disturbances.
 II never took any stock in this comet business" said practical friend of mine. "Pve 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 wife crazyl Yes, sir; factl And she's nearly driven me crazy. Do you-have yt seen anything queer about me lately"
 told him had not-that he looked as sane as his average fellow mortal.
 "Well," he resumed, i've run a mighty narrow chance, tell you. But she's cured now. If this internal comet hadn't gone away just when it did 1 should have been lo rked 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- fendant 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 I get another dose at night.
 "But this cometl She has been stricken-yes, sir, stricken-by the mys- terious influence the comet is said to have upon the human mindl 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 its tail, etc. If 1t had been straightforward comet and come right out where everybody could see it and where everybody ex- pected it, she would have been all se- 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 8 whirl of excitement.
 "She sprang comet on me every hour in the day and swept the heavens with 2-inch opera glass every night. She had Q sort of idea that redhot chunks of iron were liable to drop into our flat. She went up on the roof to see the me- teoric shower and got locked out up there by the janitor. If I 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 1 sat down to breakfast with my paper she was loaded for me. You could see hazy red light hanging 0VSA sAo ~SAoOJ o&kAoh AAonA oAI WILT dows, and she had those windows open go much at night we all got colds and snufaes. On Sunday night the sky over there was bright red at intervals. We'll, she was just wild. Then she smelled the sulphur in the air. I never saw a 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 disgusted woman you ever saw. She won't touch news paper now. She says the newspapers are the biggest hars-next to the astron- emerson earth. If I 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 Beely, ought to get six months on the island. ."-New York Herald.