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mere elaborate self-advertisement. Common sense at last, a little heated
by argument, signified its unalterable convictions by going to bed. So,
too, barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about
their nightly business, and save for a howling dog here and there, the
beast world left the star unheeded.
And yet, when at last the watchers in the European States saw the star
rise, an hour later it is true, but no larger than it had been the night
before, there were still plenty awake to laugh at the master
mathematician--to take the danger as if it had passed.
But hereafter the laughter ceased. The star grew--it grew with a
terrible steadiness hour after hour, a little larger each hour, a little
nearer the midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter, until it had
turned night into a second day. Had it come straight to the earth
instead of in a curved path, had it lost no velocity to Jupiter, it must
have leapt the intervening gulf in a day, but as it was it took five
days altogether to come by our planet. The next night it had become a
third the size of the moon before it set to English eyes, and the thaw
was assured. It rose over America near the size of the moon, but
blinding white to look at, and hot; and a breath of hot wind blew now
with its rising and gathering strength, and in Virginia, and Brazil, and
down the St. Lawrence valley, it shone intermittently through a driving
reek of thunder-clouds, flickering violet lightning, and hail
unprecedented. In Manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. And upon
all the mountains of the earth the snow and ice began to melt that
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