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The two last needed not an apology, as not being within the description of old almanacs. It is fixed on grounds which scarcely admit a doubt, that the planet Herschel was seen by Mayer in the year 1756, and was considered by him as one of the zodiacal stars, and, as such, arranged in his catalogue, being the 964th which he describes.

So I became an author, very modest at first, I do assure you, and remonstrating very seriously with the friends who had thought it best to put my name to the pieces by way of getting up a reputation; and if you ever see a woodcut of me, with an immoderately long nose, on the cover of all the U.S. Almanacs, I wish you to take notice, that I have been forced into it contrary to my natural modesty by the imperative solicitations of my dear five thousand friends and the public generally.

Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment; in paper foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey- brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, India- rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs, diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands glass and leaden pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever since he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer.

So on the shelf to which I mostly resort is a book on the Himalayas; a Lloyd's Shipping Register; a little work on seamanship that every would-be second mate knows; Brown's Nautical Almanacs; a Channel Pilot; a Continental Bradshaw; many Baedekers; a Directory to the Indian Ocean and the China Seas; a big folding map of the United States; some books dealing with strategy, and some touching on medical knowledge, but principally pathology, and especially the pathology of the mind.

Apricot, almost sadly, "in THOSE days the youth of the United States were EDUCATED in the real sense of the word. We children followed the decisions of the Supreme Court with breathless interest. Our books were few but they were GOOD. We had nothing to read but the law reports, the agriculture reports, the weather bulletins and the almanacs. But we read them carefully from cover to cover.

Thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people heard it and approved the doctrine; and immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common sermon; for the auction opened, and they began to buy extravagantly. I found the good man had thoroughly studied my Almanacs, and digested all I had dropt on these topics during the course of twenty-five years.

No man knew how a marriage would turn out; you might as well pledge yourself for the weather next morning; certainly there were signs for the wise; but were weather almanacs deceptive institutions or were they not? The innocent old theory of marriages being made in heaven was the best.

The cornfields looked from a distance as if under snow. Where was it all to end? The almanac said nothing almanacs nowadays were not what they used to be; an almanac now was no good at all. Now it looked like rain again, and Isak went in to Inger: "We'll have rain this night, God willing." "Is it looking that way?" "Ay. And the horse is shivering a bit, like they will."

The old councilor, who had three orders given him for holding his tongue, said that the Toy-goose was a prophet; for one could see on his back if there would be a severe or mild winter, and that was more than one could see on the back of the man who writes the almanacs. "Well, I shall say nothing," said the king, "however I have my own opinion."

Monday was ushered in with that sleet storm to which the almanacs still refer, and another scarcely less important event occurred that day which we shall have to pass by for the present; on Tuesday, the sleet still raging, came the historic town meeting.