Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, May 15, 1910, Page 40

BEE: MAY ANCIENT PARCHMENT SHOWING DROUTH OF 1B1S AND SACRED THOMAS OF SPELLING HALLEY IM IN the shadowing distance of the ages agone, when time had already heavy with the blase colony on the heights of Mount Olympus, the gods, weary of their toy- ing with the affairs of men, sent speed- ing through the reaches of cosmic dis tance a fiery missile of destruction to shatter the world. Vulcan gave it power, the Furies vengeance, Mercury speed, while Jupiter smiled his haughty pleasure. Wicked Minerva, baleful and ingenious tormentor, interposed as the projectile 'was about to launched on its ¢ourse. “Why let the sons of man so casily die—may they not suffer with the sight of their approaching dodm?" she hissed in accents as vicious as her cunning. Minerva was grown be gained her desire, determined there so very ago that the comet should through the universe on a journey of ages to scatter woe through the'lives of men and hations, while it neared the mark in: ever-marrowing orbit. Succeeding cyeles have scen it pass and repass, each time nearer, each time wreaking wrath and the hatred of Minerva's whim. (“Time to spring the Greek fire,” remarked the dopist. ‘“‘Here goes.”) Of the comet's coming the pages of human history bear a tale that is writ- ten in words of horror and blood. The recurring visits of the comet, as com missioned that ominous day on Mount Olympus, have been spaced at the length of a strong man's life, three score and ten. Indeed, a touch of su perhuman villainy concocted to gratify what may be called the “‘schaudenfreude,” as the sad Schopenhauer Teutonically defines joy.over suffering, of the gods. But one generation after another has been permitted te gain affluence, power and wealth to then lose alt and die when the comet came with its mysterious withering influence. As the cat plays with the mouse, Minerva has trifled with the earth. The world ‘I8 standing on tiptoe today to see the coming of the blast of flame and terror. May 18, what will it bring? The question is burning deep into the souls of those .to whom life and destiny seems worth the while. Is that to be the last of all the days? Shall then Minerva let the messenger of woe complete its mission in a mighty blast of oblivion, reducing the planet toy to a chaos of despair, then oblivion? (“Get- ting warm now.") Far into the depths of the limitless void the inter- planetary journey leads. The comet is coming around the oft-covered path bearing down at millions of miles & minute toward earth with its burden of accumulated woes, So it long sWoop ‘When that last day is at hand the great, warm, liv- ing world must go, dissolved back into the elemental energy and vapors, if the word of the wise men is to be taken. The questions that figure the tawdry fabric of human existence will all be answered with finality. The great and the insignificant, prince and pauper will pass out as the snuffing of the candle's flame, to be hurled into nothingness farther forgotten than the sand ripples on a prehistoric beach No one may tell of all the somber, sober-minded savants who are watching from the observatories with the wonderful maze of cunning but futile devices whether that last dag will be May 18 orif, indeed, the gods are to spare the world for but further feats of fancy. The astronomers have gained the little wisp of knowledge at least of the fact that for the first time in the recorded memory of the races of the world of to- day the earth is to pass so close to the comet that its tail will envelop the whirling planet. In tremulous, uncertain phrases they declare that there is a chance ~but for what? If in their computations a trifling error of a million miles or so has been made, then in- deed it will the end. Finis will be written across the universe on the page of the annals of earth, flecked with the dust in the swirling nothingness of the empty orbit. Camille Flammarion, peerless visionary, with spec- troscope and searching eye, has peered long and found nothing but the instruments of Minerva's vengeance in the comet's coming. The huge globe of destruction bears behind it a streamer measured in millions of miles which the astronomical chemist tells us is com- posed of cyanogen, hydrogen and a goodly bit of nitro- gen, intermingled with substances the like of which have never come before under human observation There are lines on the spectrum out of the range of all that has ever been recorded on that marvelous scale. The properties with “which these unknown sub- stances may be endowed is left largely to conjecture. 1t is easily to be gathered, however, that they can bear nothing that bodes good to man. They, by being un- known, must perforce be foreign to the world and someéthing which the human organism is not, there- for, caleulated to resist or assimilate. Why fret about them, for all that the scientists have discovered that is now within their ken is sufficient To bring disaster enough without the aid of horror of unknown poten- tial. (“Some near chemistry.”) NOTICE OLD WAY The millions of cubic miles of gases ¥laming in the wake of the comet, with a fervid heat out of the reach of human conception, are pregnant with the capability for the most weird and fantastic inflictions of human suffering. Hydrogen, which is a predominating com- ponent in the tail of the comet, when coming in con- tact with the atmosphere of the earth, containing, as it does, oxygen in vast volumes, can but be the cause of an explosion to, be likened only to that of the com- bustion in a gasoline motor cylinder, magnified by an infinite number of figures. With this explosion what then remains? The formulae of the chemist makes the answer easy. Hydrogen plus oxygen in chemical com- bination results in the formation of but two sub- stances, water, technically defined as H20, and hydro- gen peroxide. In a puff and thundering blast the com- bination of the comet's hydrogen with the oxygen of the earth’'s covering of air can but be followed by a precipitation of such a deluge of water as only an ocean falling from the heavens could make. This chemical rain must fall, not through the ordinary air, for then will be the oxygen removed leaving behind it to fill the space but the free nitrogen and argon, as floating remnants of the air we breathe today. The life that depends on the presence of the oxygeh must be blotted out the moment that the vital substance is taken away. The titanic shower can then only fall on a scene of death, an insensate world of inert matter and festering deca. In this rain must be held in solution the peroxide formed along with the water, which in washing over the surface of the dessicated globe will but blanch it to the whiteness of an alkali desert. Thus would the earth be left a barren, scourged ball reeling about the sky, a shame of ruin to the constellations. (‘“Now for a dramatic touch.”) But the gods in plotting long ago plotted well. It shall not be that the sons of earth may die even thus in one consuming stroke. Minerva's cunning is obvious even to her impotent victims, for she has so determ- ined that contemplation shall be part of the torture. Look over the array of gases again. There is nitrogen bubbling through the tail of fire in swirls of millions of leagues. In the limitless alembic or the sky this nitrogen is constantly entering into’ combi- nation with oxygen liberated by water com- ing under the volcanic heat of the messen- ger of death. Ntrous oxide is the result, the same nitrous oxide the dentist admin- isters, laughing gas. Heavier than the at- mospheric air, heavier than the other gaseous combinations of the comet's ail, nitrous oxide must first yield to the grav- itational attraction of the earth as the missile nears its mark. Obviously then must the laughing gas cgme pouring down through the clouds before the comet is at hand with the lighter and explosive hydrogen. Streams of the heavy gas must then pour down and filter through the planetary wind in the upper atmos- phere to poison the earthbeings with a villainous dose of laughing gas. Sport for the wicked Minerva, in- deed, that men should laugh as demons on the brink of the death that is to come. Nothing can come of the nitrous oxide other than a wave of insane mirth, mad- dened drugged delirium. Whole nations must rage into a last dance of death and maniacal merriment. (“"Horrible mess, this.”) Picture the confusion in the mighty marts of the world. Stern barons of finance doing a crazed fan- dango on their desks of mahogany while the ticker hammers the frivolities of a stock exchange flocked with raving, maudlin men. Grave professors building bonfires in the glee of a Fiiji cannibal to consume the treasure of library and laboratory. Nothing will mat- ter then, The world drunk with anarchy from afar must suffer shame to satisfy the caprice of Mount Olympus. But suffering can not even end even there. Fol- lowing the percolation of the laughing gas must come the next in the scale of weight, cyanogen, the gas that has the sweet scent of peach blossoms and the venom of bitter, convulsive death. The inhalation of cyano- gen will serve the double purpose, for an instant bring ing the tortured men out of the delirium of laughing gas to feed them in that interim of conscidusness on the more terrible poison softly sifting through the polluted air. e That moment will be one of a horrible awakening, as from a nightmare, to find it realized. Poor, suf- fering, crazed man may look about at the devastation and ruin wrought in the frenzy of the laughing gas, then the cyanogen will come stealing into his brain with a more refined but awful influence. Pain-racking nerves in convulsions that tear muscles from aching FORE SHEW/ING YE WARD TYMES OF SHAKESPEARIAN STARS (1607) -y LAUGHING GAS bone in the throes of agony in a battle as futile as clutching with a dream beast in the dark will be the end. Then comes the final deluge of chemical rain which will not'let even the wretched ruins lie in peace. (“*Stop for lunch.”) Over the hell pit the coming of the comet in that last day will spread a fantastic illumination of colors transcending in grandeur a glimpse into Dante's most vagrant imaginings. The light of the sun cannot penetrate the clouds of elemental dust and gases in that flery grenade of Vulcan. A twilight darkness vis- ible, penetrated by fitful flashes of electric effulgence compared with which the lightning that streaks the storm is but a tiny spark, will spread over the vault above in copper hued gloom. As the fire ball sweeps closer and closer the illumination will grow in succes- sions of blackest dark and the brilliance of myriad of calciums. Alas, the sight of the climax of that won- derous spectaele is not to be for the eyes of man. It will be a sight for the gods alone. Thus 'the end, look to what the comet has done in the past. The story of the evil wrought by this messenger of fate has as many chapters of record as the ear of human history. Remnants of races dead so long that they are nameless in even tradition lived long enough to inscribe on stone and papyrus and bone the tale of the wicked star. Queer bits of mastodon tusks found in the glaciers of the barren north bear in their rudely scratched symbols the lines that indisputably point to the ruin that the comet wrought even in prehistoric day; (*'Lay it on Cook.") There is among the Esquimaux of the farthest north,” says Dr. Frederick Cook, in a hitherto unpub- lished statement, “a legend of the -‘devil bird of flame,’ a cousin to the Aurora, they call him, that came long, long ages ago when that part of the world was warm, and cursed the people. Then in that day when the sky monster came nearest there was a mighty upheaval, and on the morrow it began to grow cold and all but a few died. *I have personally heard the story from the Esqui- maux and 1 know that what they say is true. Peculiar comet-shaped scrolls on ancient bits of pottery, which I unfortunately left at Etah, point to tne ‘devil bird" as their inspiration.” - Curiously enough the prehigtoric story of the comet comes literally from the ends of the earth. Lieutenant Shackleton, the pur r of the South pole, finds in the lore of a strange race discovered in the vicinity of Mount Erebus the same story that Dr. Cook bears out of the chill of the northland. Egyptologists have no difficulty in unearthing numerous records of the pas- sage of the comet. On the word of hieroglyphs now in the British museum there is ample authority for the story of the devastation of northern Africa To the terror and devastation of the evil star the WOMEN’S CLUBS IN MATRIMONY are so Lett, mention that Make the Corresponding A Secretary Smile and Say Things. able to guess ake a seat,” said the corresponding secretary, “and I will talk to you as soon as | have addressed this letter. My pen is beginning to sputter, and 1 don't blame it, for it has been busy for three hours replying to queries the answers to which could have been found in any encyclo- pedla or even in a dictionary.' essays for Elizabeth " They are Having sealed her l:tter, and after giving the stamp a farewell blow with a smail clinched fist to be sure that it would stick, she continued: “The office I hold is wear- ing on the nerves. No matter how she feels inside, a corresponding secretary must be gracious and polite in her letters, for to the outside world she Is the club, and an acri- monious and vinegary iwoman's club would seem, well—something like a hornet's nest, you know “But we get such silly letters sometimes:" She took a package from her desk, remark- ing: “"Here are some letters 1 should have liked to have put into my report to be read before the annual meeting, to liven it up, »ou khaw, but it would never do, for the colony of Extracting Ladles—It goes on really mentions that Some are from over our own country, and you would never be “From women wanting the club to write them on was suggested. “No, though we do have similar requests from men asking us to choose wives for them. have it In mind to send out a shiload of ®irls, such as England once sent out to her irginia. with of foolscap folded into a small envelope, the corresponding secretary went on is from & man In Kansas you maiden or widow without children betwecn 3 and 4 years of age, who would be will ing and satisfled life with a good, know 1 am looking for such a wife.' 1o state that he's not r that his prospects are bright, though not dazzling, 1 though he will presumably all the bread and butter that members would consider such a procedure on my part extremely frivolous when there dutles will be In the he doesn't expect he rlowing. which Is very his part. He particularly the lady shall Le figure, and he evidently dick that ‘ner Queen it please God,' for tieular type of beauty her that the really important things to of these communications the seas and others from what they are about Napoleon or he he writer offers to but asks for none, evidently to aceept a wife on oar alone. He is evidently farmer, who, though crude. tne forelgn applications are fre One would think that we Here 1s an odd one.’ some difficulty a sheet “This Dear honest 1 “This is a letter It begins know of & good «ds and relating the ‘sad his life’ in three languages. English, then, finding to live a quiet eountry water, glides into French honest farmer, let them He but wan estates. He is lonely with money “Here Is another signed Jose Ramon gentleman commences, that the should imagine. He he cannot afford luxuries. ‘give her & good living,’' house, considerate requests handsome feels with By hair shall be of what color mentions But on must not be and about that he I8 very em phatic—he will not have an frritable bride give recommendation n an honest American fet is sincere ditterent v a man in Galiela a polyglot missive expressing the sweet himself and again about to be ewamped salls along easily He is the possessor of wide and wants a f the same kind ortes y Gongora ‘Ladies—Knowing members of your acquainted with wealthy young ladies atrimonially bent, 1 there- it to inform you that I wish to be . In regard to myself I would that | am connected with the titled nubllity of my country, of which 1 am the in degree. You must know young lady which would 0 me preferable, and with whieh 1 would sympathize showling to, help with fore w that and conside say in face helr some some be no par- quite thing she sreatly he certainly needs sympathy if he ak of her which,' "' the paused to remark must as reader references being willing urning to. A letter, “If any of these stisfackary to me, please know by registered letter, as this s claiming my rlght at an early date.' It we I think, that the writer is heir to an estate which he cunnot claim until after but me buger 13 marria story of begina in in de Could 1 spare the time letter and 1 might vead you Al 7 thrilling which prove a mat ! age pposed to active branch of this club."—Chicago Record-Herald a lot more of thess in MR that assure you mon| cy 18 in Ger be but arid wite aw M ried won Ne Ins Sviss Women. an 1n Switzerland is en- titled to one-third of her husband's income Independent property, according to law, It is A Thi as her club must & new ¥ TERRIBLE DEATH BY IS PREDICTED inning of the pyramids s attributed. At last the real secret of those piles of stone has been revealed. It was in the reign of a monarch ages before Memphis was thought of that the evil star came, killing the sacred beetles and all of those things which the race worshipped. That year came a mighty plague and all the fertile plain, withering in the sun, was dotted with the bodies of the dead. Then the mighty king swore that he would withstand the evil star for ever and aye The first pyramid was.builded as a retreat from the wrath of the gods. Then the comet was gone when no one came and the pyramid was made the burial place of the king, who swore that the evil star should never disturb his ashes. This established the custom and hence after kings were buried in pyramids to protect them from the baleful gleam of the comet. (“Let's corroborate.”) Marching on down the corridors of time the comet has spared no people, no nation. Julius Caesar came to his death at the hand of Brutus under the influence of the comet. For a year after, so Plutarch recites the trail of di darkened the heavens. The troubles which beset the empire and the misfortunes of Marc Antouy are only too well known historic facts It was a bitter day for the Knglisn when, in the year of the comet, 1066, when William of Normandy defeated Harold at Hastings. True it was a day of good omen for the Normans, but how was it with kingdoms and with kings of the old line of Merrie England? It was not a day for the Saxons and the Angles. Wars have long attended the coming of the comet Again, in 1455 and 1456, the War of the Roses broke the peace of the British Isles. Nobles and their fol lowers lost their lives in what was in reality a futile struggle. The evil star was there when in 1759 the French lost Canada the British. The comet smiled serene when the hamlet of Grand Pre was burned. Thousands of ploneers were deported and scattered to the corners of the world. All the good that can be claimed was in the inspiration which led Longfellow to vg'te the poetic story of Evangeline. But the evil star Vvas the cause of all her sufferings, too. The comet proved the undoing of Jamestown, Va., which is now but a spot on the map and a memory of history. Jamestown was established in the comet year of 1607. Shakespeare, the genius, did not even escape. In that year, when he was engaged in the production of his greatest works, he was forced to take refuge with a French family to get away from the ever-pur- suing troubles which beset hi True he accom- plished much, but how much more might he have'done had he been left in peace In smoother ways of life? Attila, the Hun, de: and read there that ter & to on )airingly gazed on the comet tale of the defeat that he met on the morrow in 451, The Jus tinian pandects, the beginning of all the litigation and legislative rows that the world has seen, came |nlu‘ being in 520. Papin the Just was proclaimed king of the Franks and became the moral Ivation of hi people at the expense of most everything else tha' they had in 760. These mile-stones in history are a marked by the coming of the comet May at hand. Will the comet scatter another century of woe, or is it to end ne night th at Chalone 18 I8 near walt Mi va's Jest now? (“Done!"” exclaimed the unrepentant writer a fantastie flourish, as he tossed the last palpitating paragraph on his desk This may be tough op the gods, but they deserve it, and as for sc mnm‘l ey won't mind."”)