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.