“In 1892, at the Lick Observatory, I was engaged in photographing a comet (Swift’s) then visible in the morning sky just before daylight. Every morning’s picture increased the interest and importance of the work. Unfortunately, I had arranged for a lecture in the Normal School at San José for the night of May 6. I did not want to disappoint the people, and I certainly could not let the comet go by unphotographed. San José was nearly a mile below us in vertical height and twenty-seven miles distant by stage road. The only possible way for me to secure my photograph and not disappoint my audience was to return to Mt. Hamilton that night after the lecture. At ten o’clock I hired a horse and buggy in San José and drove up that lonely mountain road, the journey taking five hours, and arrived at the summit at three o’clock in the morning, in time to make a photograph of the comet. [Illustration: COMET 1893 IV BROOKS Exposures of October 21, 22, and 23, showing probable encounter with some medium which shattered the tail. Taken at Lick Observatory by Professor E. E. Barnard ] “The picture that I got proved to be a very important one, as the comet was then undergoing the most remarkable changes. I must say that a good many thrills passed over me during that lonely mountain ride in the dead of night—some for the chance that I might drive over into a cañon to death, and others for the possible interruption of my terrestrial existence through an encounter with some hungry, roaming mountain lion. In the main, the journey was a most impressive one. Alone in the mountains, with only the horse in front and my friends the stars above me, I doubt if my courage had not failed me entirely if the friendly stars had not encouraged me with their presence.” CHAPTER SIX RETURN OF HALLEY’S COMET IN 1910 “It would have been a gratification to know that everyone who saw this wonderful object, did so with the same feeling of elation and wonder—one would almost say veneration—with which the average astronomer regarded this beautiful and mysterious object stretching its wonderful stream of light across the sky.” —E. E. BARNARD.