The spectroscope is a singularly beautiful and delicate instrument,
consisting, essentially, of a prism of glass, which, decomposing the
light of any heavenly body to which the instrument is directed, presents
a spectrum, or long bar of color. Crossing this are narrow, dark and
bright lines produced by the gases of metals in combustion, whereby the
celestial orb's light is generated. From these dark and bright lines,
therefore, we ascertain all that is worth knowing about the composition
of the sun and stars.
Now Ben had made some striking discoveries in spectroscopic analysis at
his private garden observatory, and had also an instrument of superior
power and capacity, invented, or at least much improved, by himself; and
this instrument it was that he and I were arranging for an examination
of the comet then flaming in the heavens. William sat by apparently
uninterested. Finally we had our arrangements for an observation
completed, and Ben said: "Now turn her on."
"That reminds me," said William, "of a little story about Perry Chumly,
who--"
"For the sake of science, William," I interrupted, laying a hand on his
arm, "I must beg you not to relate it. The comet will in a few minutes
be behind the roof of yonder lodging house. We really have no time for
the story."
"No," said Ben, "time presses; and, anyhow, I've heard it before."
"This Perry Chumly," resumed William, "believed himself a born
astronomer, and always kept a bit of smoked glass. He was particularly
great on solar eclipses. I have known him to sit up all night looking
out for one."
Ben had now got the spectroscope trained skyward to suit him, and in
order to exclude all irrelevant light had let down the window-blind on
the tube of it. The spectrum of the comet came out beautifully--a long
bar of color crossed with a lovely ruling of thin dark and bright lines,
the sight of which elicited from us an exclamation of satisfaction.
"One day," continued William from his seat at another window, "some one
told Perry Chumly there would be an eclipse of the sun that afternoon at
three o'clock. Now Perry had recently read a story about some men who in
exploring a deep cañon in the mountains had looked up from the bottom
and seen the stars shining at midday. It occurred to him that this
knowledge might be so utilized as to give him a fine view of the
eclipse, and enable him at the same time to see what the stars would
appear to think about it."
"_This_," said Ben, pointing to one of the dark lines in the cometic
spectrum, "_this_ is produced by the vapor of carbon in the nucleus of
the heavenly visitant. You will observe that it differs but slightly
from the lines that come of volatilized iron. Examined with this
magnifying glass"--adjusting that instrument to his eye--"it will
probably show--by Jove!" he ejaculated, after a nearer view, "it isn't
carbon at all. _It is_ MEAT!"
"Of course," proceeded William, "of course Perry Chumly did not have any
cañon, so what did the fellow do but let himself down with his arms and
legs to the bottom of an old well, about thirty feet deep! And, with the
cold water up to his middle, and the frogs, pollywogs and aquatic
lizards quarreling for the cosy corners of his pockets, there he stood,
waiting for the sun to appear in the field of his 'instrument' and be
eclipsed."
"Ben, you are joking," I remarked with some asperity; "you are taking
liberties with science, Benjamin. It _can't_ be meat, you know."
"I tell you it _is_ though," was his excited reply; "it is just _meat_,
I tell you! And this other line, which at first I took for sodium, is
_bone_--bone, sir, or I'm an asteroid! I never saw the like; that comet
must be densely peopled with butchers and horse-knackers!"
"When Perry Chumly had waited a long time," William went on to say,
"looking up and expecting every minute to see the sun, it began to get
into his mind, somehow, that the bright, circular opening above his
head--the mouth of the well--_was_ the sun, and that the black disk of
the moon was all that was needed to complete the expected phenomenon.
The notion soon took complete obsession of his brain, so that he forgot
where he was and imagined himself standing on the surface of the earth."
I was now scrutinizing the cometic spectrum very closely, being
particularly attracted by a thin, faint line, which I thought Ben had
overlooked.
"Oh, that is nothing," he explained; "that's a mere local fault arising
from conditions peculiar to the medium through which the light is
transmitted--the atmosphere of this neighborhood. It is whisky. This
other line, though, shows the faintest imaginable trace of soap; and
these uncertain, wavering ones are caused by some effluvium not in the
comet itself, but in the region beyond it. I am compelled to pronounce
it tobacco smoke. I will now tilt the instrument so as to get the
spectrum of the celestial wanderer's tail. Ah! there we have it.
Splendid!"
"Now this old well," said William, "was near a road, along which was
traveling a big and particularly hideous nigger."
"See here, Thomas," exclaimed Ben, removing the magnifying glass from
his eye and looking me earnestly in the face, "if I were to tell you
that the _coma_ of this eccentric heavenly body is really hair, as its
name implies, would you believe it?"
"No, Ben, I certainly should not."
"Well, I won't argue the matter; there are the lines--they speak for
themselves. But now that I look again, you are not entirely wrong: there
is a considerable admixture of jute, moss, and I think tallow. It
certainly is most remarkable! Sir Isaac Newton--"
"That big nigger," drawled William, "felt thirsty, and seeing the mouth
of the well thought there was perhaps a bucket in it. So he ventured to
creep forward on his hands and knees and look in over the edge."
Suddenly our spectrum vanished, and a very singular one of a quite
different appearance presented itself in the same place. It was a dim
spectrum, crossed by a single broad bar of pale yellow.
"Ah!" said Ben, "our waif of the upper deep is obscured by a cloud; let
us see what the misty veil is made of."
He took a look at the spectrum with his magnifying glass, started back,
and muttered: "Brown linen, by thunder!"
"You can imagine the rapture of Perry Chumly," pursued the indefatigable
William, "when he saw, as he supposed, the moon's black disk encroaching
upon the body of the luminary that had so long riveted his gaze. But
when that obscuring satellite had thrust herself so far forward that the
eclipse became almost annular, and he saw her staring down upon a
darkened world with glittering white eyes and a double row of flashing
teeth, it is perhaps not surprising that he vented a scream of terror,
fainted and collapsed among his frogs! As for the big nigger, almost
equally terrified by this shriek from the abyss, he executed a
precipitate movement which only the breaking of his neck prevented from
being a double back-somersault, and lay dead in the weeds with his
tongue out and his face the color of a cometic spectrum. We laid them in
the same grave, poor fellows, and on many a still summer evening
afterward I strayed to the lonely little church-yard to listen to the
smothered requiem chanted by the frogs that we had neglected to remove
from the pockets of the lamented astronomer.
"And, now," added William, taking his heels from the window, "as you can
not immediately resume your spectroscopic observations on that
red-haired chamber-maid in the dormer-window, who pulled down the blind
when I made a mouth at her, I move that we adjourn."