"There is always some one to be found in every gathering who will not
submit to law. At the time of the total eclipse in Iowa, in 1869, there
passed in and out among our telescopes and observers an unknown, closely
veiled woman. The remembrance of that occasion never comes to my mind
without the accompaniment of a fluttering green veil.
"This time it was a man. How he came among us and why he remained, no
one can say. Each one supposed that the others knew, and that there was
good reason for his presence. If I was under the tent, wiping glasses,
he stood beside me; if the photographer wished to make a picture of the
party, this man came to the front; and when I asked the servant to send
off the half-vagrant boys and girls who stood gazing at us, this man
came up and said to me in a confidential tone, 'They do not understand
the sacredness of the occasion, and the fineness of the conditions.'
There was something regal in his audacity, but he was none the less a
tramp.
"Persons who observe an eclipse of the sun always try to do the
impossible. They seem to consider it a solemn duty to see the first
contact of sun and moon. The moon, when seen in the daytime, looks like
a small faint cloud; as it approaches the sun it becomes wholly unseen;
and an observer tries to see when this unseen object touches the glowing
disc of the sun.
"When we look at any other object than the sun, we stimulate our vision.
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