A FALLING STAR. 205 



" And this air it is which has ultimately compassed my 

 destruction. So long as I merely passed near your earth, 

 but kept clear of that deadly net which you have spread, 

 in the shape of your atmosphere, to entrap the shooting 

 stars, all went well with me. I felt the ponderous mass 

 of the earth, and I swerved a little in compliance with 

 its attraction ; but my supreme velocity preserved me, 

 and I hurried past unscathed. I had many narrow 

 escapes from capture during the lapse of those countless 

 ages in which I have been wandering through space. 

 But at last I approached once too often to the earth. On 

 this fatal occasion my course led me to graze your globe 

 so closely that I could not get by without traversing the 

 higher parts of the atmosphere. Accordingly, a frightful 

 catastrophe immediately occurred. Not to you ; it did 

 you no harm ; indeed, quite the contrary. My dissolution 

 gave you a pleasing and instructive exhibition. It was 

 then, for the first time, that you were permitted to see 

 me, and you called me a shooting star or a meteor. 



" You are quite familiar with the disasters associated 

 with the word collision. Some of the most awful acci- 

 dents you have ever heard of arose from the collision of 

 two railway trains on land or of two ships in the ocean. 

 You are thus able to realise the frightful consequences of 

 a collision between two heavy bodies. But in the collision 

 which annihilated me I did not impinge against any other 

 heavy body. I only struck the upper and extremely rare 

 layers of your atmosphere. I was, however, moving with 

 a speed so terrific that the impulse to which I was ex- 

 posed when I passed from empty space even into thin air 

 was sufficient for my total disruption. 



