Long, long ago, when white men were still savages who dwelt in caves, patient star gazers in China and Chaldea studied the motions of this Comet. Farther back than that, in the hoary days before the art of writing was known, ancient bards sang of this Star and its hairy tail. Some of their words are still remembered. Artists have drawn pictures of this Comet. Their pictures are still shown. Women have stitched images of this Comet into their handiwork. Some of this handiwork can still be seen. Coiners have stamped designs of this comet on their coins and medals. Those coins are still shown in museums. Priests, Popes and great Divines have preached about this Comet. Their sermons are still preserved in the records of the Church. Learned men have written in their books what happened when the Comet came. Those books are read to-day. The coming of this Comet in olden times has been fixed in lasting records, which he who runs may read. Nothing in all History is more certain than the story of this Comet. WHY HALLEY’S COMET? Two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, when this Comet was seen shining over the City of London, the great astronomer, Edmund Halley, made a special study of it. Halley was the first to say that this Comet had come before and would surely come again. He wrote down the time when the Comet would come again, long after he should be dead. “If it should return,” he wrote, “according to our predictions, about the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.” The Comet returned, as he had foretold, seventeen years after Halley’s death, when it was first seen in 1758, on Christmas night, by a man in Saxony, named Palitsch, who was looking for the Comet. From that day this Comet has been called after Halley. Since then many famous astronomers, such as Clairaut, Pontécoulant and Laplace in France, have calculated the dates for the Comet’s return. Last time, in 1835, Halley’s Comet returned within a few nights of their prediction. This time, so the astronomers figured seventy-five years ago, the Comet should be plainly seen after dark late this May. What they predicted has come true. THE TERROR OF THE COMET “Canst thou fearless gaze Even night by night on that prodigious Blaze, That hairy Comet, that long streaming Star, Which threatens Earth with Famine, Plague and War?” —_Sylvester._ So long as the memory of man goes back, the appearance of a Comet has always been taken as a just cause for dread. In the train of Comets, it has ever been held, come wars, bloodshed, fires, floods, plagues, famine and the fall of mighty rulers. Our Holy Bible confirms this time-honoured belief. The Saviour Himself said, according to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chap. XXI., Verse 10-11: