The Book of the Damned

Throughout the history of astronomy, every comet that has come back upon predicted time--not that, essentially, there was anything more abstruse about it than is a prediction that you can make of a postman's periodicities tomorrow--was advertised for all it was worth. It's the way reputations are worked up for fortune-tellers by the faithful. The comets that didn't come back--omitted or explained. Or Encke's comet. It came back slower and slower. But the astronomers explained. Be almost absolutely sure of that: they explained. They had it all worked out and formulated and "proved" why that comet was coming back slower and slower--and there the damn thing began coming faster and faster. Halley's comet. Astronomy--"the perfect science, as we astronomers like to call it." (Jacoby.) It's my own notion that if, in a real existence, an astronomer could not tell one longitude from another, he'd be sent back to this purgatory of ours until he could meet that simple requirement. Halley was sent to the Cape of Good Hope to determine its longitude. He got it degrees wrong. He gave to Africa's noble Roman promontory a retrousse twist that would take the pride out of any Kaffir. We hear everlastingly of Halley's comet. It came back--maybe. But, unless we look the matter up in contemporaneous records, we hear nothing of--the Leonids, for instance. By the same methods as those by which Halley's comet was predicted, the Leonids were predicted. November, 1898--no Leonids. It was explained. They had been perturbed. They would appear in November, 1899. November, 1899--November, 1900--no Leonids.