"It might be intoxicating," called out a facetious member. "Will the chair permit me to point out," said another with great gravity, "that such a proceeding would be eminently rash, for the nebulous fluid might be highly poisonous." ["Hear! Hear!" and laughter.] "What do you say of this strange darkness and these storms?" asked an earnest-looking man. (This meeting was held after the terrors of the _third sign_ had occurred.) "I say," replied the president, "that that is the affair of the Meteorological Society, and has nothing to do with astronomy. I dare say that they can account for it." "And I dare say they can't," cried a voice. "Hear! Hear!" "Who are you?" "Put him out!" "I dare say he's right!" "Cosmo Versál!" Everybody was talking at once. "Will this gentleman identify himself?" asked the president. "Will he please explain his words?" "That I will," said a tall man with long whiskers, rising at the rear end of the room. "I am pretty well known. I----" "It's Jameson, the astrologer," cried a voice. "What's _he_ doing here?" "Yes," said the whiskered man, "it's Jameson, the astrologer, and he has come here to let you know that Cosmo Versál was born under the sign Cancer, the first of the watery triplicity, and that Berosus, the Chaldean, declared----" An uproar immediately ensued; half the members were on their feet at once; there was a scuffle in the back part of the room, and Jameson, the astrologer, was hustled out, shouting at the top of his voice: "Berosus, the Chaldean, predicted that the world would be drowned when all the planets should assemble in the sign Cancer--_and where are they now?_ Blind and stupid dolts that you are--_where are they now?"_ It was some time before order could be restored, and a number of members disappeared, having followed Jameson, the astrologer, possibly through sympathy, or possibly with a desire to learn more about the prediction of Berosus, the father of astrology. When those who remained, and who constituted the great majority of the membership, had quieted down, the president remarked that the interruption which they had just experienced was quite in line with all the other proceedings of the disturbers of public tranquillity who, under the lead of a crazy American charlatan, were trying to deceive the ignorant multitude. But they would find themselves seriously in error if they imagined that their absurd ideas were going to be "taken over" in England. "I dare say," he concluded, "that there is some _scheme_ behind it all." "Another American 'trust'!" cried a voice. The proceedings were finally brought to an end, but not before a modest member had risen in his place and timidly remarked that there was one question that he would like to put to the chair--one thing that did not seem to have been made quite clear--"Where _were_ the planets now?" A volley of hoots, mingled with a few "hears!" constituted the only reply.