home, in the streets, in the offices, in the exchanges, in the
street-cars, on the Elevated, in the Subways. Crowds gathered on corners
to watch the flapping posters aloft on the kite lines. The afternoon
newspapers issued specials which were all about the coming flood, and
everywhere one heard the cry of the newsboys: _"Extra-a-a! Drowning of
a Thousand Million people! Cosmo Versal predicts the End of the
World!"_ On their editorial pages the papers were careful to discount
the scare lines, and terrific pictures, that covered the front sheets,
with humorous jibes at the author of the formidable prediction.

_The Owl,_ which was the only paper that put the news in half a
column of ordinary type, took a judicial attitude, called upon the city
authorities to tear down the posters, and hinted that "this absurd
person, Cosmo Versal, who disgraces a once honored name with his
childish attempt to create a sensation that may cause untold harm among
the ignorant masses," had laid himself open to criminal prosecution.

In their latest editions, several of the papers printed an interview
with Cosmo Versal, in which he gave figures and calculations that, on
their face, seemed to offer mathematical proof of the correctness of his
forecast. In impassioned language, he implored the public to believe
that he would not mislead them, spoke of the instant necessity of
constructing arks of safety, and averred that the presence of the
terrible nebula that was so soon to drown the world was already manifest
in the heavens.

Some readers of these confident statements began to waver, especially
when confronted with mathematics which they could not understand. But
still, in general, the laugh went on. It broke into boisterousness in
one of the largest theaters where a bright-witted "artist," who always