d passed, and still
not a trace of the object could be seen. Supposing that the light
of the bright star might be too dazzling, I cut it off with a piece
of green glass in the focus. Still no companion showed itself.
Could it be that our instrument, in a more favorable location,
would fail to show what had been seen with one so much smaller?
This question I could not answer, but wrote to my European friend
of my unavailing attempts.

He replied expressing his perplexity and surprise at the occurrence,
which was all the greater that the object had again been seen and
measured in April, 1874. A fine-looking series of observations
was published, similar to those of the preceding year. What made
the matter all the more certain was that there was a change in the
direction of the object which corresponded very closely to the motion
as it had been predicted by Auwers. The latter published a revision
of his work, based on the new observations.

A year later, the parties that had been observing the transit of Venus
returned home. The head of one of them, Professor C. H. F. Peters
of Clinton, stopped a day or two at Washington. It happened that
a letter from my European friend arrived at the same time. I found
that Peters was somewhat skeptical as to the reality of the object.
Sitting before the fire in my room at the observatory, I read to
him and some others extracts from the letter, which cited much
new evidence to show the reality of the discovery. Not only had
several of his own observers seen the object, but it had been seen
and measured on several different nights by a certain Professor Blank,
with a telescope only ten or twelve inches aperture.

"What," said Peters, "has Blank seen it?"

"Yes, so the letter says."

"Then it is n't there!"

And it really was not there. The maker of the discovery took it
all back, and explained how he had been deceived. He found that the
telescope through which the observations were made seemed to show a
little companion of the same sort alongside of every very bright star.
Everything was explained by this discovery. Even the seeming motion
of the imaginary star during the twelve months was accounted for by
the fact that in 1873 Procyon was much nearer the horizon when the
observations were made than it was the year following. [1]

There is a sequel to the history, which may cause its revision by some
astronomer not many years hence. When the great telescope was mounte