confines of 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.