XV. BENT LIGHT

PEOPLE tell us that light comes "straight from the sun." Did you ever hear of its getting bent and broken after it gets to us?

A little girl named Helen had a doll's looking-glass given her. "Helen" means light; she did not know it then, but she was greatly pleased with her mirror, for she was fond of light and its ways.

For a few days she carried the mirror about with her and played tricks with it.

One of the plays was "throwing light." If she held the mirror in the bright sunlight, she could throw a bright spot wherever she pleased in the room. If she kept the mirror moving, the bright spot would move too. She made it play around people's faces and in their eyes till they begged her not to, it was so bright.

In the evening she asked her papa how it came to be so dazzling. He told her that the mirror drew a great many rays to itself, but that the coating of quicksilver on the back would not let them go through. They were turned and sent on a new errand. The

smoothness of the glass and the quicksilver made the spots bright.

Anything," he said, "on which the rays fall must either take them or send them somewhere else, just as we should have to do with people who might come

to us.

"The light that comes to our eyes, except when we are looking straight at the sun, is on its second errand We call it reflected light."

or course.

He told her another thing that she had never thought of. It was that when she looked at him it was light moving from him to her that she saw him by, though it was light from the sun.

Could it have a third errand then?" she said.

"No, when a ray has come to our eyes it has done its work."

Afterward, when this little girl was told that she could be a light in the world, she understood that she was to reflect the light of love and truth, just as bright objects reflect sunlight.

XVI. LIGHT DIVIDED

ANOTHER way that light gets broken and taken apart always seems wonderful to us even when we understand all about it.

Not every bright thing will do this. The things that break light apart must first open their doors to it and let it in a little way. Then they

seem to change their minds and send it out by another door. The dotted lines through the prism show it.

When it comes out it has been

divided into seven strands, or bands, and no two of them are in the least alike. If they fall upon anything on this errand they give it the colors of the bands, red, yellow, blue, orange, green, violet, and indigo.

Seen out of doors against the great dome of the sky they take its shape, and because the raindrops helped to make them, we call the beautiful half circle a rainbow.

All this you knew before. What I wish to tell you. beside is that when men had seen rainbows many, many times, and had divided light with prisms of glass, making all the colors, they invented a new instrument

called the spectroscope. With the spectroscope they can divide the light of anything that is shining or burning, even that of the very distant stars. In this way new sky stories have been written.

A great many new nature stories have been added since broken or refracted light could bring news from the far away stars.

Leaves and flowers had the secret first. No one of them took the light just as it came to them. Some would absorb or take in a part and reflect or send out the rest. Pure red flowers took in six of the colors, or the light that made them, and sent out the one they chose for their own. Yellow flowers made another choice. Leaves seemed to agree to have one color, which was a good way for us.

When we see the orderly behavior of light and flowers, working together to make earth beautiful, we must better do our part in using heaven's good gifts.

Green calm below, blue quietness above.

XVII. IN LOOKING-GLASS WORLD

To punish the kitty for not folding its arms properly, Alice held it up to the looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was-"and if you're not good directly," she added, “I'll put

you through into Looking

the bit just behind the fireplace. Oh, I do wish I could see that! I want so much to know whether they've a fire. You never can tell, you know, unless the fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that