Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE
see what a small thing three seconds of arc is: the
shudder that goes through you then would open the
seams of Noah's Ark itself, from figurehead to rudder
post, and you would drop that melon the same as if
you had never had any but just a casual interest in
it. I know about these things, because this is not
tradition I am writing, but history.
Now then, notice this. About the end of August,
I846, a change came over me and I resolved to lead
a better life, so I reformed; but it was just as well,
anyway, because they had got to having guns and
dogs both. Although I was reformed, the perturbations did not stop! Does that strike you? They
did not stop, they went right on and on and on, for
three weeks, clear up to the 23d of September; then
Neptune was discovered and the whole mystery
stood explained. It shows that I am so sensitively
constructed that I perturbate when any other planet
is disturbed. This has been going on all my life.
It only happens in the watermelon season, but that
has nothing to do with it, and has no significance:
geologists and anthropologists and horticulturists all
tell me it is only ancestral and hereditary, and that
is what I think myself. Now then, I got to perturbating again, this summer-all summer through; all
through watermelon time: and where, do you think?
Up here on my farm in Connecticut. Is that significant? Unquestionably it is, for you couldn't raise
a watermelon on this farm with a derrick.
That perturbating was caused by the new planet.
That Washington Observatory may throw as much
doubt as it wants to, it cannot affect me. because I
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