fballeg'g Comet 53 



would rise to the dignity of a naked-eye object. And 

 to think that the flamboyant original affrighted 

 nations ! 



My first view of this truly pathetic body was on the 

 evening of Sunday, May 22nd, 1910. When I pointed 

 it out to some friends thus : " There you see the 

 celebrated Halley's Comet, which for more than two 

 thousand years has been wheeling about the sun, and 



which " my remarks were unceremoniously cut 



short by the entire party declaring that they refused 

 to believe it. On my assuring them that it was so, the 

 look of disappointment was general, and thence- 

 forward none but myself found further interest in the 

 insignificant, elusive, nebulous smudge which mas- 

 queraded under the guise of the great " Halley's." 



Next evening, when the sun-glow had become sub- 

 dued, out again timidly came the comet-phantom, 

 and hundreds of watchers in my vicinity saw it and 

 disbelieved. Neither would they be comforted. As the 

 evening went on, these watchers grew not merely dis- 

 couraged, but undisguisedly disgusted. Their desire 

 by that time was not so much to see a magnificent 

 comet as to meet those people who had so airily 

 promised them one. 



m 



After an inglorious apparition " Halley's " returned 

 to that state of opera-glass visibility from which many 

 of us thought it might as well never have emerged. 



It was evident on Thursday, May 26th, that the 

 comet was rapidly fading from view. On the following 

 evening I found it a difficult naked-eye object, and by 

 Sunday, May 29th, it was grown so faint as to be picked 



