Scores of Windsor Ont. residents, says a press despatch, beheld an angel, surrounded by firy (sic) vapor, suspended in the city last Saturday night. At Detroit, on the same evening, the angel was seen, brooding over the earth. In both cities the beholders indignantly deny they were fooled by northern lights. They cannot be shaken in the claim that they saw an angel.
French soldiers, since the war began, have repeatedly seen Joan of Arc and St. Michael--so they vow--sweeping across the night skies above the camps. And they believe it means victory.
The Ojibway "Thunder Eagle" is on the rampage again at Fort William, Ont. The eagle makes his rounds only when wondrous world crises are pending. He was seen soaring over Thunder Bay, Ont. at midnight on March 7. Most observers took him for a many colored light that blazed across the skies, and which was visible from New York to Canada that night. Only the initated (sic) recognized him as the portent-proclaiming eagle, back on the job of fortelling a mighty crisis of some sort.
Sticking to the proved facts and no dabbling in superstition, it is an odd coincidence that many of our country's great events (as well as big happenings in other parts of the world) have been preceded by strange signs in the heavens. To cite just one or such queer cases:
Thousands of New Yorkers stared in amaze (sic) at the western horizon one night early in 1898. Pulsating angrily against a dead black sky hung something that looked like a firy (sic) red sword whose point seemed to drip blood. The flaring apparition was not a comet or a meteor. For many minutes it swung above the horizon dazzlingly visible. Later some people declared the "sword" was merely an eccentric reflection of a great fire cast on the clouds. Others tried to explain it as northern lights. There were a dozen explanations, all of them different. The superstitious believed it was a mystic portent of the Spanish War, which was about to wake our peace-loving Nation to conflict after thirty-three years of calm. War followed almost at once. War--and victory.
Late in 1872 the night was made brilliant more than once by a whizzing mass of fireballs, which might have been supposed to be ordinary meteors if they had not been far brighter and infinitely more numerous than a meteor flight. Superstition felt itself justified, in the panic which soon afterward swept the whole country, spreading financial ruin and suicide and chaos.
In 1861 a lurid comet, clear accross (sic) the heavens and filling the night with an unearthly radiance, ushered in the first year of our Civil War. The next year--when things looked darkest for our country--a similar comet blazed nightly. And, almost at once, the Nation's fortunes took a turn for the better, preparing for the victory that was to follow.
A flaming comet known for years to astronomers as "the great comet," was causing no end of fear and conjecture when our Mexican War broke out; another war, by the way, which led to victory.
The November skies, in 1799, were aglare with what is still mentioned as "the rain of fire." Whether this dizzyingly bright swirl of aerial flames was merely a wholesale flight of meteors or whether it had other cause, our brief war with France was won a few months later. George Washington, by the way, died less than a month after this rain of fire. And many insisted the celestial pyrotechnics were a portent of his death.
In 1770 a fircely (sic) luminous body sprang into view in the night skies. It was described as "having a head which appeared about four times the diameter of the moon." It may have been a comet (one was recorded that year, but our superstitious ancestors looked on it as a portent. And presently the supposed "portent" was justified. For in a few weeks came the first bloodshed of the dawning Revolution at the Boston massacre of December, 1770--a massacre that the actual preliminary bout of the conflict which was to bring us freedom and victory!
Tecumseh, the mystic Indian Sachem, sought to combine all the western tribes of his people against the United States in the war of 1812. When the council of lesser chiefs hesitated, he promised them a "sign." And he kept his word. To this day nobody knows how he could foretell the thing that was to happen. But it is a historical fact. he told the chiefs that he was about to journey to a spot more than a hundred miles distant from the village where they were in council. At a given date, he said, he would stamp his foot and every house in the village would collapse. At the precise date he named, and while he was far away, a mighty earthquake shook the whole village to pieces and devastated the surrounding country. This phenomenon too was supposed to be a portent. If so, it was in Uncle Sam's favor, not in Tecumseh's. For the United States won the war and Tecumseh was killed.
So much for our own land, tho (sic) many another so-called sign is on the record in American history and tradition.
Every one recalls the story of King Constantine, founder of Constantinople, who changed the story of the world and of Christianity because of a sign he saw in the midnight sky. He was fighting a horde of heathen, most of whom were the Germans and of other Central Powers of today. When these heathen were pre- sing his tired army most perilously Constantine looked up into the sky one night and beheld there a firy (sic) cross. His army gazed at it in dismay, tho (sic) various modern astronomers have found various explanations for the miracle. At the same time, so he declared, Constantine heard a voice whispering, "In hoc signo vinces!" (Through this sign you shall conquer!*) He adopted the cross as his standard and it led him to victory.
On the night before another world- changing event--the murder of Julius Ceasar (sic)--Rome was rent by an earthquake, weird flashed of light blazed athwart the sky and a huge lion strode across the portice of the Capitol. (There was nothing ghostly, perhaps, about the lion. During the earthquake his cage in the Coliseum menagerie might well have fallen apart and let him escape.)
All history is starred with similar instances of heavenly portents, &c--portents followed by some epoch-making event. Any one who takes stock in these things may beel relieved to know that, in our country, such signs have generally preceded a stroke of grand good luck to American arms.