Star People - Part II

***If you missed the 1st entry on my fabulous new 100-year old book, please see my post from 4/5/2010.***

"The Comet and the Pole Star"

(we join the Princess as she is talking to the 3 Others - Prudence, Pat and Kitten, 3 little girls whose illustration appear in the 1st post as they watched the sky with the Princess.)

"....They (the Star People) have LAW! - and that's something every one of them obeys without a single word, or ever stopping to argue. When anything is the Rule of the Sky, that ends it. - Unless you're a comet."
"Oh, comets!" exclaimed Phyllisy. "What do they do?"
"What don't they do?" corrected the Princess. "They're silly. Just a head, with the wildest, fuzziliest hair," - she drew on the sand as she talked, - "that never SAW a hairbrush - and tails! - switching and flying and spreading over everything and curling around! - and, as if one such tail weren't bad enough, some of them must have two!" The Princess stopped drawing, because the sand was filled up with comets, as far as she could reach. "The Star People try to be charitable, and when they hear of some fresh, bad thing one of those flyaways has done, they say: 'He doesn't know enough to be good;' and they don't talk about it anymore. But when any really horrid mischief is done, it's always when a comet or two has been around."

The Princess goes on to tell a tale of an extremely mischievious comet - the written descriptions of the comet are wonderful : "small, vagabond head", "fuzzy hair", "long tail with a wicked crook at the end", "danced up and down like an elf." This illustration brings the words to life:

***Illustrations in "Star People" are by Frances B. Comstock, born in 1881 and died in 1922 at age 41. Apparently her husband, Enos Comstock, was also an illustrator and together, they illustrated the 1909 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Childs Garden of Verses."

Stay tuned for the next excerpt from "Star People" later in the week. Till then, stay happy and remember to gaze upon the nighttime sky.