f space, where we are swept over
an etheric Niagara or dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see no
room here for the shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent,
Mr. James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we should watch with a
very close and interested attention every indication of change in those
cosmic surroundings upon which our own ultimate fate may depend."

"Man, he'd have made a grand meenister," said McArdle. "It just booms
like an organ. Let's get doun to what it is that's troubling him."

"The general blurring and shifting of Fraunhofer's lines of the spectrum
point, in my opinion, to a widespread cosmic change of a subtle and
singular character. Light from a planet is the reflected light of the
sun. Light from a star is a self-produced light. But the spectra both
from planets and stars have, in this instance, all undergone the same
change. Is it, then, a change in those planets and stars? To me such an
idea is inconceivable. What common change could simultaneously come upon
them all? Is it a change in our own atmosphere? It is possible, but in
the highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around us, and
chemical analysis has failed to reveal it. What, then, is the third
possibility? That it may be a change in the conducting medium, in that
infinitely fine ether which extends from star to star and pervades the
whole universe. Deep in that ocean we are floating upon a slow current.
Might that current not drift us into belts of ether which are novel and
have properties of which we have never conceived? There is a change
somewhere. This cosmic disturbance of the spectrum proves it. It may be
a good change. It may be an evil one. It may be a neutral one. We do
not know. Shallow observers may treat the matter as one which can be
disregarded, but one who like myself is possessed of the deeper
intelligence of the true philosopher will understand that the
possibilities of the universe are incalculable and that the wisest man is
he who holds himself ready for the unexpected. To take an obvious
example, who would undertake to say that the mysterious and universal
outbreak of illness, recorded in your columns this very morning as having
broken out among the indigenous races of Sumatra, has no connection with
some cosmic change to which they may respond more quickly than the more
complex peoples of Europe? I throw out the idea for what it is worth.
To assert it is, in