MARK TWAIN ON THE COMET.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3223, 28 October 1881, Page 4

MARK TWAIN ON THE COMET.

The correspondent of the New York Sun, who found Mark Twain on the roof of his house watching the comet with a long Dole in his hand, reports Mark as saying :— ' They are all wrong about the tail. I've ciphered on that tail until I understand «very inch of it. It's absurd to suppose hhat'the tail isn't solid, and pretty tough, too. Do you imagine that this comet could zo bulging through space at the rate of two hundred miles a minute without knocking apots out of a tail that was vapour ? Tie a v "og bank on to the rear end of New. York irni Boston four o'clock express, start her off at even forty miles an hour and see how long your fog bank will travel in company vith your locomotive. Yet they ask us to callow this miserable nonsense about i-.he comet's tail. My observations of his fellow, also of Coggia's comet, seven /ears ago, have eonvisced me that comets' are fastened on tight, and are of n ibrous and durable nature, like Hartford beefsteak. , ' And what do you propose to ■]o with your pole ? ' Great Ccesar! With i tail forty-two million miles long, three nillion miles thick, and tough as whip 'eather, whisking about.in the wake of that oiratical craft every time she tacks overhead, don't you see the necessity of keeping i cool-headed and muscular man on deck iere to fend off in case the cussed thing whisks the wrong way.'