The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

NEW-YORK, September 8.

Extract of a letter from Connecticut, Aug. 25.

"The year 1787 may justly be denominated the year of discontents and apprehension. Every man is a politician: and every one is so sore, either in reality or imagination, that a by-stander can scarce venture to laugh without hurting the feelings of some one honest citizen or other. The conduct of Shays had for a long time been the source of ill-humour among the patriotick; our impatience to know what the grand Convention are about has made us no less snappish to each other for more than two months past; and he must be a Democritus himself who would venture to smile when the decay of our trade is brought upon the carpet. As if all these, and a hundred more I might mention, were not sufficient causes of peevishness, a devilish philosophical fellow came into one of our towns with an account of a large comet that it is expected will appear the beginning of autumn.--The approach of such a body, said he, is much to be apprehended, for should it approximate too near the earth in passing the line of its orbit, towards the sun, dissolution would be the inevitable consequence."

After we had sufficiently shuddered at that, he went on to inform us. "that the planet Jupiter, which is a thousand times larger than the earth, was violently driven from its usual course in 1680, by a comet, an universal deluge ensued in that great planetary body, and the inhabitants totally destroyed."

Life at best is but miserable; fools, however, commonly make it more so, by their apprehensions of evils to come.