XIII. THE SUN We have been looking all this time at the way life works in the world of plants. It is time we let something else have its turn. Have you read or heard the stories of The Seven Little Sisters who live on the Great Round Ball that Floats in the Air? Their homes were far apart, but all of them looked up into the same bright sky. The same sun gave them all light. There are two reasons why we cannot study the sun very well. First, it is too far away; and second, its light is too bright. Did you ever see a balloon before it was cut loose and allowed to rise into the sky and sail away? And did you notice how quickly it grew smaller, till the people in it could not be seen at all; and then how easy it was to lose it in the sky because its colors grew so dim? A fire balloon or a skyrocket, being bright, will show better, but they seem very small when they are high overhead. Suppose a balloon were to go up a mile, or that a great fire balloon went ninety times as high, could you follow it with your eyes? Possibly. Think now that the great king of lights, the sun, is a million times farther away still, and yet we see it every morning and can trace its way across the sky every clear day! What a wonderful thing is light that it can fill all our sky! And what heat the sun must have that it reaches all the way to us! Light and heat have very constant ways that we call laws, because we may trust them and work with them. Sunbeams are the sun's fingers reaching down to work for us, and we may know something about them. All of us do know something already, even if we have not yet learned to tell it in words. In the next lessons we will talk of things that belong to light. XIV. LIGHT AND SHADOW BABY NED was on the house porch. It was nine o'clock in the morning and the sun shone clear and That was what Ned's mind was asking. He did not know. like himself. He moved and it moved. It looked a bit He had a little spade in his hand and he waved it. The queer sight waved one too. "Why, Ned, it's your shadow! See me make shadows!" So Jane stood in the sunshine and made motions that would show on the house wall. LIGHT AND SHADOW 29 Little as Ned was he looked a bit ashamed that Jane had read what was going on in his mind, so he did not care to see shadows any more. begun to learn some very wonderful things. But he had While Ned was having his nap, Jane told his mother what Ned had seen for the first time. "I know," she said, "that it is the sun that makes the shadows, but how does it shape them so?" If the sun did not shine brightly there would be no shadows," said the mother, "but it was Ned's body that made and shaped them. If the light could have gone through Ned it would have been light on the house wall instead of dark." But why should the shadow wait till it got to the wall?" asked Jane. "It did n't. The shadow reached all the way from Ned's back to the wall. If there had been no wall, you could have seen its shape only on the floor, and the shape would have been different. Ned would have looked taller. "The best shadows are made when the sun is low in the sky. We will all go out at five o'clock and see ourselves, and the house, and the trees making tall shapes on the ground. "If Ned has a little fear we will help him to get over it. I knew a little girl who could not get over her fear of shadows. She was not afraid in the dark; but when evening came, and lamps were lighted, she could not help looking for 'the shapes.' When she went up the stairs to go to bed, she begged to hold the lamp herself, so that the shadow shapes would fall behind her." These shadow images are often very odd; they can never be as true as the light images given us by a mirror, or by the still water of a pond. Here is a poet's story of a true image: I laid me down On the green bank, to look into the clear A shape within the water gleam appeared, I started back; It started back; but pleased I soon returned; Do you know the story of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image thinking it a beautiful nymph of the fountain? |