(A Cosmos Story.)
Chapter I.
Mr Noman Luckier, the eminent astronomer, was walking in his garden. Suddenly he was staggered by a sharp blow on the head. Something fell at his feet. It was not his head. He picked it up. It was a meteoric stone. This set him thinking.
"Here," said he, as he rubbed his newly-acquired phrenological development with one hand and held the meteoric stone in the other, "is a solid, ponderable body, which I can handle, examine, and analyse, and it comes to me," continued the eminent scientist, extending his arms and looking round him, then directing his gaze upwards, his eye dilating with the grandeur of the discovery,—"it comes to me direct from the Cosmos!"
Chapter II.
There was a chuckle from behind the neighbouring hedge, and, as the Philosopher returned to his sanctum to write a paper on the "Spectra of Meteorites," a small boy stepped cautiously out into the road, and hurried down the lane.
"Ooray!" muttered the small boy to himself; "the old gent don't know my name. What did he say about 'Crismas'?" And he vanished into space.
Chapter III.
The Philosopher, with aching head, sat down to write, and penned these words,—
"Cosmical space is filled with meteorites of all sizes, flying about with immense velocities in all directions."