Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

RICHARD A. PROCTOR.

STORIES OF STARLAND

BY
MARY PROCTOR
(Daughter of late Richard A. Proctor)

NEW YORK
POTTER & PUTNAM COMPANY
LONDON
G. W. BACON & CO., Limited

Copyright, 1898,
BY
POTTER & PUTNAM COMPANY.

THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J., U. S. A.

DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF MY BROTHER
HARRY.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.—Psalms.

PREFACE.

This book has been a labor of love from the beginning to the end, and I have thoroughly enjoyed conversing with my little friends Harry and Nellie. Now that the book is finished, I leave it with regret.

It is impossible to give all the authorities for my legends of the stars. Many were told to me by my father when I was a little girl, or I found them among books in his library, which is now scattered far and wide. Others are from Grecian mythology, Japanese folk-lore, Hindoo legends, while some of the American Indian stories were found in musty volumes of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution.

As for the descriptive astronomy, among my authorities are Professor C. A. Young, Professor Barnard, Agnes M. Clerke, Professor R. S. Ball, Schiaparelli, Flammarion, Professor Todd, Mr. Lowell of Flagstaff, Ariz., and my father, the late Richard A. Proctor.

With the kind permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. I have been allowed to use the following selections: "Why the Stars Twinkle," by Oliver Wendell Holmes; "The Evening Star," by Longfellow; "Lady Moon," by Lord Houghton; and "The New Moon," by Mrs. Follen. The editor of St. Nicholas has kindly given me permission to include the poems "The Four Sunbeams," by M. K. B.; "Estelle's Astronomy," by Delia Hart Stone; and "Seven Little Indian Stars," by Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt. I am indebted to the editor of Child-Study Monthly for the little poem "Is It True?" by Morgan Growth. The poem on "The Solar System" is taken from the Youth's Companion, with the kind permission of the editor. The verses about "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" are so familiar to every child that my book of Stories of Starland would seem incomplete without this poem by Eugene Field. The illustration of a Part of the Milky Way is from a photograph taken by Professor Barnard at the Lick Observatory. Mr. Percival Lowell has also very kindly allowed me to make use of his excellent illustration of the Canals of Mars, taken from Todd's "New Astronomy," published by the American Book Company.

I now submit this little book to my young readers, sincerely hoping its pages may inspire them with a renewed interest in the wonders of Starland.

Mary Proctor.

New York City, June, 1898.

CONTENTS.

"HARRY."

STORIES OF STARLAND.

LIGHT.

Night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of the whole life dies

When love is done.

—F. W. Bourdillon.

THE STORY OF GIANT SUN.

"Sister, come here and talk to me. I am so tired of being alone."

His sister Mary at once closed her book, and took a chair beside Harry's couch. Poor little Harry was not like other boys. He could not play and run about as they did, for he was a cripple. All the long weary days he had to lie on a couch which was placed under the shady trees during the warm summer season. He had learned to love the flowers and trees, and the bright blue sky overhead, and his sister often told him pretty stories about them. She was just thinking of telling him one now, when he said gently:

ANCIENT STORIES OF THE SUN.

"Sister, you have told me so many stories of the flowers. I wish you would tell me something about the sky. I have been looking at it for such a long time, watching the little white clouds floating across it like boats with silver sails; and then I tried to look at the bright yellow sun, but it dazzles my eyes. Won't you tell me about it, and where it goes in the evening when we cannot see it any more? Is it always ready in the morning to give us light? Is it ever late, do you think? What would we do if it forgot to come round the edge of the earth and give us light?" he continued anxiously.

EARTH SUPPOSED TO BE FLAT.

"There is no fear of that," said his sister Mary, laughing at the idea. "But a long time ago people asked the very same question. In those days they thought the earth was flat, and surrounded by an ocean without end. The Hindoos supposed that the earth rested upon four elephants, and the four elephants stood on the back of an immense tortoise, which itself floated on the surface of an endless ocean. It was thought that the sun plunged into the ocean when it disappeared in the evening, and some people said they heard a hissing noise when the red-hot body went under the waves.

"But if the sun dropped into the water each evening, how did it happen that next morning it was seen again, as hot and bright as ever? The people could not tell why, so they said that during the night the gods made a new sun to be used the next day."

"That must have kept them busy," said Harry, laughing.

ANCIENT IDEA OF THE EARTH.

"The good people made up another story about the sun, so that the same one could be saved each night. Just as it was dropping into the ocean, a god named Vulcan, who had a great boat ready, caught it, and all night long he paddled with the blazing sun. Next morning he was ready at sunrise to send the sun up into the sky in the east. He threw it with so much force that it would go very high, and when it came down on the other side in the west, he stood ready to catch it again."

"But where does the sun really go to at night?" asked Harry curiously. "I should like to know."

HEAT OF THE SUN.

ILLUSTRATING DAY AND NIGHT.

"We live on a big round globe called Earth," replied his sister, "and we travel round the sun, which gives the earth light and heat. The sun is like a great lamp in the sky, and when you face the lamp you see the light, but if you turn away from it you are in darkness. As the earth goes around the sun, it whirls around like a huge top; first one side and then the other is turned to the sun and gets sunlight, and so we have day and night. If the sun, or the lamp in the sky, went out and stopped shining, all the light would go out on the earth, and we would miss its heat as well.

"It is so hot that if it kept coming nearer and nearer until it was as far from the earth as the pretty bright moon, the earth would get warmer and warmer and melt like a ball of wax."

"Just like Nellie's doll, then," said Harry, "when she left it on the grass the other day. The sun was so hot that day that when Nellie picked up her doll, she found that its wax face had melted and the eyes had fallen in. So the sun did that," continued Harry, laughing heartily. "Poor Nellie! I must tell her that the next time I see her."

"I can show you something else to prove how hot the sun is," said Mary, as she picked up a leaf from the ground. "Just wait a moment while I go into the house and get a magnifying-glass."

In a few minutes she returned, holding the glass in one hand and the leaf in the other. She held it so that the sun shone directly upon the glass and passed through it onto the leaf. In a few seconds the leaf began to smoke, and then burn, until a little hole could be seen.

Harry was so surprised that he had to try it for himself, and he looked forward with much delight to a visit from his cousin Nellie.

"Won't I have a lot to tell her?" he said to his sister: "all about the sun's melting her dollie, and how to make the sun burn a hole through a leaf. But the sun cannot be very far away, can it?" he asked.

DISTANCE OF THE SUN.

"Yes, it is very far away," replied Mary. "If a railroad could be made from the earth to the sun, and a train started going at the rate of a mile a minute, it would take days and weeks and years to get there.

"Let me see," said Mary, making a little note in her note-book. "There are sixty minutes in an hour, and twenty-four hours in a day, and three hundred and sixty-five days in a year. Why, Harry, do you know it would take that train nearly one hundred and seventy-five years to get there?"

"It must be very far away, then," said Harry, "more than a hundred miles."

"It is more than a million miles," said Mary. "It is nearly ninety-three millions of miles away. Now let us suppose you want to go to the sun. You would call at the railroad office and ask for a ticket to Sunland. The officer in charge would appear a little surprised, because that is quite a long trip. Then he would look up the cost of the journey in his book, and hand you a mileage book, saying: 'Sir, if you want to save money on this trip, you had better take a mileage book with you, costing two cents for every mile. Even then your fare will be nearly two million dollars.'"

"Then I would say: 'Dear sir, I cannot go, as I know my sister could not spare all that money. I think I would rather walk to the sun.' How long would it take me to walk there, supposing I could walk?" asked Harry thoughtfully.

"Dear, you would have to keep walking a very long time before you would ever get there. Supposing you walked four miles an hour, and ten hours a day, and kept this up for hundreds of years, you would be more than six thousand years on the way. When you reached the sun you would be footsore and weary, and as old as the hills."

Harry laughed heartily at the idea, and thought again of poor Nellie's doll and the melting wax running like tears down its cheeks.

"But suppose," he asked, his eyes bright with excitement, "someone fired a big cannon at the sun. Would the cannon-ball ever get there?"

Again Mary brought out her little note-book, and, with rather a look of surprise, she said: "Supposing the cannon-ball went as fast as it could go, it would take nine years to reach the sun, and the sound of the explosion would reach there in fourteen years. The cannon-ball would come along first, and five years afterward, if you were living on the sun, you would hear the sound made when the cannon was fired off.

"It takes time for me to walk from the garden to the house, so it takes time for sound to travel from the earth to the sky; and sound travels only one-fifth of a mile in a second. Do you remember the thunderstorm the other day, Harry, that frightened you so?"

"I shall never forget it," said Harry, trembling at the thought. "You said, 'Count slowly'; and I counted one, two, three, four, five, up to fifteen."

"Then I said: 'Don't be afraid, brother; the storm is three miles away.'"

"Yes, I remember," said Harry; "and I thought you were very clever, and wondered how you knew."

"It was not so wonderful, after all, was it?" said Mary, laughing.

"Now tell me, sister," said Harry. "Supposing I had a very long arm, and stretched it out toward the sun, and touched it with the tip of my little finger. What would happen?"

"You would never know that you had burned it, for the pain of burning would be one hundred and fifty years going along your little finger, and down your giant arm nearly ninety-three millions of miles long, before it at last reached your brain. Then it would let you know that one hundred and fifty years before you had burned your little finger."

Harry stretched out his little arm in the direction of the sun, and, looking at it critically, laughed at the idea of a giant arm millions of miles long.

"It is too short by several inches," said his sister, reading his thoughts, and joining in the laugh. "It would take hundreds and hundreds of little arms as long as yours, would it not? Now what else do you want to know about the sun?"

SIZE OF THE SUN.

"If you are not very tired, sister," said Harry coaxingly, "I should like to know how large it is. Is it as large as the earth?"

"Ever so much larger," replied Mary. "It is so large that if it were cut up into a million parts, each part would be larger than the earth. If we could weigh the sun in a pair of giant scales, it would take over three hundred thousand globes as heavy as the earth to make the scales even. If the sun were hollowed out, and the earth placed in the center, there would be room for the moon as well. Now the moon is thousands of miles from the earth, and yet the edge of the sun would be thousands of miles from the moon, as you will see in the picture. If a tunnel could be made through the center of the sun, and a train started going at the rate of a mile a minute, it would take six hundred days for the train to reach the other side of the tunnel. If this same train went around the edge of the sun it would take five years. A train going around the earth would take seventeen days to complete the journey."

"But suppose we went around the sun in a big steamer, like the one Uncle Robert came over in; how long would that take?" asked Harry curiously.

"Only fifteen years," said his sister, laughing. "If you had started when you were a little baby you would still have five more years to travel before you would get back again to the starting-point."

"Then the sun must be very large," said Harry thoughtfully. "Let us call it GIANT SUN. Has it always been as large as it is now?"

THE SUN IN THE DAYS OF ITS YOUTH.

"Ever so much larger," replied Mary.

THE SUN AND PLANETS FORMING OUT OF STAR-MIST.

"Once upon a time it was a ball of glowing gas reaching as far as the path of the last planet. The ball whirled around rapidly and the outer edge cooled. A ring formed and separated from the ball and whirled around on its own account, until it broke up into fragments. One of the fragments drew all the others toward it, and another ball was formed, but quite a small ball this time, called a planet. Just like the central ball, the planet kept whirling around, threw off a ring, the ring broke up into little pieces, and the pieces, coming together, made a little moon. The planet is Neptune, and it still has only one moon. Meanwhile the ball in the center kept whirling around, other rings formed other planets with their attendant moons, completing the family of Giant Sun.

"The Sun is in the center and his planets circle around him. Next to him is playful little Mercury, then beautiful Venus, then our own planet Earth. Beyond it, we find ruddy Mars, the four hundred and fifty baby planets, giant planet Jupiter, the ringed planet Saturn, and the last two planets, Uranus and Neptune. All these planets are under the control of the sun, and cannot get away from him."

"What is the sun made of?" asked Harry.

"Of iron and copper and silver, and many other things we can find on earth; but the sun is so hot that they are melted together into a mass like glue. This is the center of the sun. Outside is a shell of bright clouds, from which rosy flames leap to a height of thousands of miles above the surface of the sun. All around the edge of the sun, and reaching millions of miles beyond it, is the pearly light of the corona like a crown of glory. The pearly corona fades away into a soft beam of light."

"How beautiful the sun must be!" said Harry, as he listened attentively to his sister. "But is it all alone in the sky, and does it not have any little stars to play with?"

"It is not at all lonely," said Mary, laughing at the idea of the stars as playthings for Giant Sun, "and is kept quite busy looking after its large family of planets. I will tell you about them to-morrow, or nurse will scold me for tiring you. And now, good-by, my dear. Don't forget all I have told you about Giant Sun."

"Forget! how could I, sister? It is better than any fairy tale I have ever heard. Giant Sun! Why you have told me enough to keep me thinking all day and all night. Here comes Nellie. Hello! Nellie, come here and let me tell you all about GIANT SUN, and how he melted your dollie for you the other day."

"Melted my dollie!" said a pretty little golden-haired girl, as she tripped like a little fairy up the garden-path. "So he melted my dollie, did he? I should like to see him do it again!" Tears came into her eyes at the thought of her sad experience. Since then, however, a china head had replaced the melted wax, and Nellie's fickle little heart had been comforted. So the tears soon vanished in a smile as she showed her new treasure to Harry.

ON THE SETTING SUN.

Those evening clouds, that setting ray,

And beauteous tint, serve to display

Their great Creator's praise;

Then let the short-lived thing called man,

Whose life's comprised within a span,

To Him his homage raise.

We often praise the evening clouds,

And tints so gay and bold,

But seldom think upon our God,

Who tinged these clouds with gold.

—Sir Walter Scott.

GIANT SUN AND LITTLE EARTH.

THE FOUR SUNBEAMS.

BY M. K. B.

Four little sunbeams came earthward one day,

Shining and dancing along on their way,

Resolved that their course should be blest.

"Let us try," they all whispered, "some kindness to do,

Not seek our own pleasuring all the day through,

Then meet in the eve at the west."

One sunbeam ran in at a low cottage door,

And played "hide-and-seek" with a child on the floor,

Till baby laughed loud in his glee,

And chased with delight his strange playmate so bright,

The little hands grasping in vain for the light

That ever before them would flee.

One crept to the couch where an invalid lay,

And brought him a dream of the sweet summer day,

Its bird-song and beauty and bloom;

Till pain was forgotten and weary unrest,

And in fancy he roamed through the scenes he loved best,

Far away from the dim, darkened room.

One stole to the heart of a flower that was sad,

And loved and caressed her until she was glad,

And lifted her white face again;

For love brings content to the lowliest lot,

And finds something sweet in the dreariest spot,

And lightens all labor and pain.

And one, where a little blind girl sat alone,

Not sharing the mirth of her playfellows, shone

On hands that were folded and pale,

And kissed the poor eyes that had never known sight,

That never would gaze on the beautiful light

Till angels had lifted the veil.

At last, when the shadows of evening were falling,

And the sun, their great father, his children was calling,

Four sunbeams sped into the west.

All said: "We have found that in seeking the pleasure

Of others, we fill to the full our own measure,"

Then softly they sank to their rest.

—St. Nicholas, December, 1879.

THE SUN.

Somewhere it is always light;

For when 'tis morning here,

In some far distant land 'tis night,

And the bright moon shines there.

When you've retired and gone to sleep,

They are just rising there;

And morning o'er the hill doth creep

When it is evening here.

And other distant lands there be

Where it is always night;

For weeks the sun they never see,

The stars alone give light.

But though 'tis dark both night or day

It is as wondrous quite

That when the night has passed away,

The sun for weeks gives light.

Yes, while you sleep the sun shines bright,

The sky is blue and clear;

For weeks and weeks there is no night

But always daylight there.

THE FAMILY OF GIANT SUN.

The next morning, when Mary came out in the garden to sit with Harry, she was surprised to see an audience of three instead of one: Harry, whose face beamed with delight when he saw her; Nellie, who was seated in a tiny rocking chair beside him, and Nellie's doll.

"You see, dollie wants to know all about Giant Sun, too," Nellie gravely informed Mary. "I never could remember all, and she might remember what I forget. Besides, she must learn some day. That is what mamma said about me. I heard her," Nellie continued wisely, as she looked up at Mary. "Do you mind telling me about the sky-people too?"

"Mind? Why you little bit of a doll baby," laughed Mary, as she picked her up, doll and all, and hugged her, "if you and dollie promise not to go to sleep, you can stay here as long as you want to. But does Aunt Agnes know you are here, Nellie; or have you run away from home?"

GIANT SUN AND HIS FAMILY.

"No, I have not run away," said Nellie earnestly, "but my dollie has. Nurse brought me over here, but she did not know my dollie was here. I forgot all about her yesterday, while Harry was telling me about Giant Sun, and I left her out on the grass. But she didn't melt a bit. I knew you wouldn't, dear little dollie, would you? Now, dollie, sit up straight, and listen to Cousin Mary talk. My, how she can talk, too! Can't you?"

"I'll try," said Mary, laughing. "So you want to hear about Giant Sun and his family. He has such a large family, and he has to give them all plenty of light and heat. If he put out his big lamp in the sky, it would be always dark here, and we would shiver with cold and die. When I come to your room at night, Harry, to say good-night, I always carry a lamp in my hand so that I can see you; but supposing a puff of wind blew it out, then I could not see you at all.

"Now this light is not only for us, but for the rest of the sun's family as well. First, there is little Mercury, who was named after the god of thieves; and he deserves this name, because he steals more light and heat from the sun than any of the other planets."

WHAT IS A PLANET?

"What is a planet?" asked Harry.

"A planet is just like this earth we are living on, and only shines with the light it borrows from the sun. If we lived on planet Mercury, and could look at our earth, we would see it shining like a bright star in the sky; but all the light comes from the sun."

"Do we live on a star, then?" asked Nellie, her little eyes wide open with amazement.

"No; we live on a planet. We could not live on a star, as a star is blazing hot. That is the difference between a star and a planet. A star is hot and bright and shining and gives light to the planets, if it has any. Planets are little globes like the earth that circle around the sun."

"Then the sun must be a star," said Harry, "as you told me yesterday that it is very hot."

"That is right," said Mary; "and every star in the sky is a sun."

"And has lots of weensy-teensy planets going all around it?" asked Nellie excitedly.

STORY OF PLANET MERCURY.

"Some of them have, I am sure," said Mary. "But now we are running along too fast, and I must tell you about our own sun first, and its nearest planet Mercury. Well, Mercury is a very warm little world, and it gets so near the sun that sometimes it is about nine times as warm as here, and at other times it is only four times as warm. You see, Mercury does not go round the sun in a perfect circle, so at times it is farther away than at others. Now, the sun is like a great fire in the sky, and the nearer we go to it the warmer we are. How would you like to live on a little world where it is nine times warmer than it is here?"

"I should not like it at all, would you, dollie?" said Nellie; "we would roast if we went to world Mercury."

"But we don't know whether there are any people there," continued Mary, "and if there are, they might not mind the heat at all. You can get used to the heat, just as Uncle Robert did when he went to India. Don't you remember how he felt the change when he came home, and how he shivered? He missed the heat just as we would suffer from it if we went to India for the first time."

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF SUN AS SEEN FROM THE PLANETS.

"Then Uncle Robert would not mind going to Mercury," said Harry, laughing, "if he is getting to like the heat in India. But I do not want him to go yet, as he might never come back again; and what would we do without him?"

"What would we?" said Nellie mournfully, her eyes filling with tears at the very thought.

"Is a planet made of earth and stones and trees and flowers, just like planet Earth?" asked Harry.

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF THE PLANETS.

"Yes, dear," replied his sister; "only some planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, are still wrapped up in a blanket of clouds and steam, and we cannot see them yet. They are very hot indeed, and all the water that will make the oceans and seas and bays is now steam and clouds hiding the true planet from view. Water could no more rest on the surface of the planets Jupiter and Saturn than it could rest on red-hot iron. Don't you remember, the other day, when nurse upset a cup of water on the hot stove, how the water sizzled and turned into steam in a moment?

"Now planet earth, a long time ago, when it was a very young world, was very hot like Jupiter. All the lakes and seas and oceans were turned into steam and blankets of cloud. It would have been a very uncomfortable world to live on then. But it became cooler and cooler, and the clouds changed into the oceans and seas and lakes that make our earth so beautiful.

"Some day this little world will grow old, and the oceans will get smaller and smaller, and the earth colder and colder. Then there will be scarcely any air to breathe, and we would gasp, and die just like that poor fish that Uncle Robert caught last week and threw in the bottom of the boat. Don't you remember, Nellie, how the poor little thing gasped and jumped around? It could not live out of the water, so it died. Now, we cannot live without air, and if this earth had not any air we would die. But this will not happen for a very long time."

"Are you quite sure?" asked Harry, with an anxious look on his face; "because I don't want to die yet, sister."

"Quite sure, my little brother," she said, kissing him tenderly; "for hundreds and hundreds of years must pass away before anyone will have any idea that the earth is growing old."

"And what will become of the poor little fishes when the oceans dry up?" asked Nellie sadly, as she clasped her dollie closely in her arms, as though to protect it from the coming trouble.

"I expect they will all die," said Harry wisely; "because you know, Nellie, they can't live out of water. Can they?"

"Or else that fish Uncle Robert caught would have lived," said Nellie. "But please tell us a story about Mercury, Cousin Mary, and the other little planets."

"Well, Mercury is a very little planet, and instead of taking a year of three hundred and sixty-five days, it goes around the sun in eighty-eight days. That is, it goes round the sun four times while we go round it only once. Some think Mercury always keeps the same side turned to the sun, so that it is always day on one side and night on the other, but we are not quite sure about this yet."

"I should like to live on Mercury, wouldn't you, Harry?" said Nellie, clapping her hands with glee. "Just think of day all the time, and never having to go to sleep!"

"But you would get very tired of that," said Mary, "and long for the night to come. And, besides, would you not miss seeing the moon and the beautiful stars?"

"I would live on the edge of Mercury," said Harry thoughtfully, "so that when I was tired of day I might slip around it and have night. It must be very cold on the other side, where the sun does not shine, if Mercury gets all its heat from the sun."

"I suspect it is," said Mary, "and I don't believe we should like to live on Mercury, after all; so let us try the next planet, which is called Venus."

STORY OF PLANET VENUS.

"What a pretty name," said Nellie; "and is Venus very warm, like Mercury?"

"It is not so near to the sun," replied Mary, "but it is about twice as warm and bright as our planet. Venus is nearly as large as the earth, and sometimes she is called her twin sister.

"Like Mercury, she may probably always turn the same face to the sun, and get baked on one side and frozen on the other. She looks like a beautiful silver globe in the sky. Sometimes we see her early in the morning as a morning star, or just about twilight as an evening star. Like Mercury and the earth, she borrows all her light from the sun. We only see her because the sun is shining on her. Next to Venus is our own planet, earth, and around it circles the moon, but I must tell you about that another time."

EARTH IN SPACE.

ESTELLE'S ASTRONOMY.

BY DELIA HART STONE.

Our little Estelle

Was perplexed when she found

That this wonderful world

That we live on is round.

How 'tis held in its place

In its orbit so true

Was a puzzle to her,

With no answer in view.

"It must be," said Estelle,

"Like a ball in the air

That is hung by a string;

But the string isn't there!"

—St. Nicholas, March, 1896.

VENUS.

Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,

If better thou belong not to the dawn,

Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn

With thy bright circlet.

—Milton.

THE EVENING STAR.

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,

Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,

Like a fair lady at her casement, shines

The evening star, the star of love and rest!

And then anon she doth herself divest

Of all her radiant garments, and reclines

Behind the somber screen of yonder pines,

With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.

O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus!

My morning and my evening star of love!

My best and gentlest lady! even thus,

As that fair planet in the sky above,

Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night,

—Longfellow.

MERCURY.

First, Mercury, amid full tides of light,

Rolls next the sun, through his small circle bright;

Our earth would blaze beneath so fierce a ray,

And all its marble mountains melt away.

Fair Venus next fulfills her larger round,

With softer beams and milder glory crowned;

Friend to mankind, she glitters from afar,

Now the bright evening, now the morning star.

—Baker.

A RAMBLE ON THE MOON.

The moon was shining brightly and flooding Harry's room with its rays. He was suffering so very much, and had tried in vain to sleep. Presently he asked his nurse if she would not let Mary come and talk to him. "It will not tire me," he begged earnestly; "and it does tire me to lie here hour after hour with no one to talk to."

His nurse understood him so well, and her heart ached for the lonely child who had so little to amuse him in life. She never refused a request if it were at all possible to grant it. So she called his sister Mary, who hastened at once to his room, and brother and sister were soon far away on a ramble in starland.

"We shall go to the moon this evening," she began, "and find out what a queer old world it is."

"Old?" asked Harry; "why do you call it old, when it looks so bright and new? See, sister, how it seems to be looking right into the window and watching us. I wonder if it knows what we are saying about it. Now what would it think if it heard you calling it old?"

THE MOON.

"But it is," said Mary, laughing; "and very old indeed. Its face is wrinkled and scarred, and is just like that of the old dried-up apple we found in the orchard the other day."

"What makes it so bright, then, if it is so old?" asked Harry, as he looked curiously at the moon.

"It borrows its light from the sun," replied his sister; "if the sun were to stop shining you would not be able to see the moon at all. It would be as dark as night and twice as gloomy."

"Do you think there are people on the moon?" asked Harry excitedly.

"No, dear, not even the 'Man in the Moon,' though I am going to tell you some stories about him presently. Besides, no one could live on the moon, as there is not any air to breathe, and you cannot live without air. There is not any water to drink; in fact, there is not a drop of water on the moon."

"Then it must be very old," said Harry thoughtfully, "because you know you told me, sister, some time ago, that if a planet grows very old all the oceans and bays disappear."

"Yes, the moon is very old; it is a dead world. If you could go there, you would find it a very gloomy spot. There are no trees or flowers; and there is not even a blade of grass. The sky is always black and the stars shine night and day. The shadows are so black on the moon that it would be a fine place to play hide-and-seek. The moment you stepped into a shadow you would become invisible."

SCENERY ON THE MOON.

"Just like the prince in the fairy tale who put on a little cap and no one could see him," said Harry.

"Yes; that prince would not need the cap on the moon. If he did not want anyone to know he was there, all he would have to do would be to keep in the shadow. No one would hear his footsteps, as not a sound can be heard on the moon. It would be useless to speak, as there is no air to carry the sound of a voice."

"I should not like to go to the moon, then," said Harry seriously, "because you could not tell me any stories, sister, could you? What would I do then?"

"I really cannot imagine," said Mary, laughing; "but perhaps you might come across the Man in the Moon and talk to him in sign-language."

"Like the deaf-and-dumb people?" asked Harry.

"If he could understand it," said Mary; "but then, we know there is really not any Man in the Moon."

"But there is a story about him," said Harry coaxingly, "and I do wish you would tell it to me, just now while the moon is looking at us from the sky."

THE MAN IN THE MOON.

"Well, once upon a time," began Mary, in true fairy-story fashion, "there was a man who went out into the woods and picked up sticks on a Sunday. That was very wicked of him, you know, because Sunday is a day of rest, and picking up sticks is work. He tied the sticks together into a bundle, and, putting them on his shoulder, started to walk home with them. On the way he met a handsome stranger, who said to him:

"'What are you picking up sticks for on Sunday?'