BOOK OF THE DAMNED 135 



self, that all that we call progress is not so much response to "urge" 

 as it is response to a hiatus or if you want something to grow 

 somewhere, dig out everything else in its area. So I have to accept 

 that the positive assurances of astronomers are necessary to us, or 

 the blunderings, evasions and disguises of astronomers would never 

 be tolerated: that, given such latitude as they are permitted to 

 take, they could not be very disastrously mistaken. Suppose the 

 comet called Halley's had not appeared 



Early in 1910, a far more important comet than the anaemic lu- 

 minosity said to be Halley's, appeared. It was so brilliant that it 

 was visible in daylight. The astronomers would have been saved 

 anyway. If this other comet did not have the predicted orbit 

 perturbation. If you're going to Coney Island, and predict there'll 

 be a special kind of a pebble on the beach, I don't see how you 

 can disgrace yourself, if some other pebble will do just as well 

 because the feeble thing said to have been seen in 1910 was no 

 more in accord with the sensational descriptions given out by 

 astronomers in advance than is a pale pebble with a brick-red 

 bowlder. 



I predict that next Wednesday, a large Chinaman, in evening 

 clothes, will cross Broadway, at 42nd Street, at 9 p. m. He doesn't, 

 but a tubercular Jap, in a sailor's uniform does cross Broadway, at 

 35th Street, Friday, at noon. Well, a Jap is a perturbed China- 

 man, and clothes are clothes. 



I remember the terrifying predictions made by the honest and 

 credulous astronomers, who must have been themselves hypnotized, 

 or they could not have hypnotized the rest of us, in 1909. Wills 

 were made. Human life might be swept from this planet. In quasi- 

 existence, which is essentially Hibernian, that would be no reason 

 why wills should not be made. The less excitable of us did expect 

 at least some pretty good fireworks. 



I have to admit that it is said that, in New York, a light was seen 

 in the sky. 



It was about as terrifying as the scratch of a match on the seat of 

 some breeches half a mile away. 



It was not on time. 



Though I have heard that a faint nebulosity, which I did not see, 

 myself, though I looked when I was told to look, was seen in the 

 sky, it appeared several days after the time predicted. 



A hypnotized host of imbeciles of us: told to look up at the sky: 

 we did like a lot of pointers hypnotized by a partridge. 



