XLVII. WILD WANDERERS You are too young to have seen such an appearance in the sky as this of the picture. People A comet is apt to be a fearsome sight. frighten themselves and each other by asking if it is not a sign of some dread catastrophe that is about to befall the earth. The latest great comet was seen about thirty years ago. Comets appear for a little time and vanish. The name comes from the long flowing beard which falls from the moonlike center. It has been known to reach halfway down the sky. Some smaller sky bodies of the same kind you may all see if you look for them before the end of the next August. Meteors are common in that month. They seem like natural fireworks provided for the entertainment of a summer evening. Falling stars are of the same class. XLVIII. THE MILKY WAY ON a clear night, besides the greater and lesser stars, you may have seen stretching across the sky a broken band of soft whitish light. As you may see in the picture, it is not everywhere of the same width. Here and there in it are stars which would look large and bright if seen standing by themselves. This much your eyes will tell you of the Milky Way. You can see how it came by its name. Get an opera glass to look through and see if you cannot find more stars within the bands of light. Perhaps you can borrow a telescope such as captains of ships use at sea. Through it more stars and clusters of stars can be counted, but the white bands do not change. If you could get a chance to look through one of the great telescopes, such as that in California, you would discover more stars; but still the milky background would remain. What makes it, and what does it mean? It consists of countless stars which distance makes seem near together, and it means that we can get no idea of the greatness of the space which lies about us in every direction, and can have no notion of the number of stars that occupy it. In arithmetic you will come soon, if you have not done so already, to what is called enumeration, or naming orders of numbers. From units, tens, hundreds, thousands, which you can count and understand, you go on to millions, billions, trillions, etc., which could not be counted in a lifetime; in this way you can think what it may mean to speak of the countless stars. This is the end, for the present, of lessons about things of earth and sky. Should you wish to go further, it must be in another book, which will deal with people who have lived on the earth since time began, and learned of its secrets and those of the great space which surrounds it. SELECTIONS THE VOICE OF THE GRASS Here I come creeping everywhere; By the dusty roadside, On the sunny hillside, Close by the noisy brook, In every shady nook, I come creeping, creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; Nor hear my low, sweet humming; For in the starry night, And the glad morning light, I come quietly creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; My humble song of praise Most joyfully I'll raise To Him at whose command I beautify the land, Creeping, silently creeping everywhere. SARAH ROBERTS. THE CLOVERS The clovers have no time to play; And then they lay aside their cares And go to sleep in clover beds. Then when the day dawns clear and blue, They hold them up and let them dry; For clovers have no time to play. HELENA LEEMING JELLIFFE in Outlook Story Book. |