Foster's Daily Democrat

Where Mathematics Failed

The story told by a New Haven correspondent of the New York Evening Post of the locating of a meteor by Professor H. A. Newton of Yale, from data obtained from a chance photograph of the meteor's flight, recalls to the Hartford Courant another story recently related hereabout by a Yale graduate. This young man when a student occupied a room in Divinity hall. One night he undertook with a toy rifle to hit one of the lights on the campus. His aim was poor, and the ball passed through the window of an eminent and venerable professor of science (not Professor Newton) and imbedded itself in the wall. This was the opportunity for the professor and for science. He, too, set to work and 'computed the curve,' and with the exact skill of infallible figures he traced the ball right back to the room of an innocent colleague, who didn't even know the rifle had been fired.

"The unfledged minister flatly denied all knowledge of the affair. But men, even ministers, have been known to 'make denials in self defense,' and the professor had the proof with him. There was the bullet, there were the marks of its course, and there was the computation worked out. It looked as if a pulpit career was to be nipped in the bud. But the guilty student heard what was going on. He called on the professor, confessed the offense, pointed out that the man of science was 200 feet out in his computation and advised that the matter be dropped right where it was. And that was done."