A Wicked Boy "Astronomises."

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 229, 31 March 1874, Page 8

A Wicked Boy "Astronomises."

" They say," writes Max Adder, " that the chief astronomer at-the Washington' Observatory was dreadfully sold a short time since. A wicked boy, whose Sunday school experience seems only to have made him more depraved, caught a firefly, and stuck it, with the aid of some mucilage, in the centre of the largest lens:in the telescope. That night, when the astronomer went to work, he perceived a blaze of light, apparently in the heavens, and what amazed him more was, that it would give a couple of spurts, and then die out, only to burst forth again in a second or two. He examined it carefully for a few moments, and then began to do sums to discover where in the heavens that extraordinary star was placed. He thought he found the locality, and the. next morning he telegraphed all over the universe that he had discovered a new and remarkakle star of the third magnitude in the Orion. In a day or two all the astronomers in Europe and America were studying Orion, and they gazed at it for hom-s until they were mad, and then they began to telegraph to'the man in Washington to know what he meant.

The discoverer took another iloolr, and found that the new star had moved about eighteen billion miles in twenty-four hours, and upon examining it closely, he was alarmed to perceive that it had legs !

When he went on the dome the next morning to polish up the glass, he found the lightning bug. People down at Alexandria, seven miles distant, heard part of the swearing, and they say he went into it with whoh>-souled sincerity and vigorous energy. The bill for telegraphing despatches amounted to 2600 dollars, "and now the astronomer wants to find that hoy. He wishes to consult with him about something.