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There remains but the third class, the superstitious.
These worthies were not content merely to rest in ignorance;
they must know all about things which had no existence whatever,
and as to the moon, they had long known all about her. One set
regarded her disc as a polished mirror, by means of which people
could see each other from different points of the earth and
interchange their thoughts. Another set pretended that out of
one thousand new moons that had been observed, nine hundred and
fifty had been attended with remarkable disturbances, such as
cataclysms, revolutions, earthquakes, the deluge, etc. Then they
believed in some mysterious influence exercised by her over human
destinies-- that every Selenite was attached to some inhabitant
of the earth by a tie of sympathy; they maintained that the
entire vital system is subject to her control, etc. But in time
the majority renounced these vulgar errors, and espoused the true
side of the question. As for the Yankees, they had no other
ambition than to take possession of this new continent of the sky,
and to plant upon the summit of its highest elevation the star-spangled
banner of the United States of America.
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