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GEMS IN THE SKY.
A SUGGESTION.
Astronomy as a science is almost pure mathematics, but pic-
torially it is a cosmic marvel and poem. The skies are so infinitely
lovely that one can scarcely believe they really exist! They should
become a near and dear part of every human being. But mere reading
cannot accomplish this. By that road you will never be able
to say: "Those are the Pleiades, these are the Hyades, that fine
star is Denebola, dancing attendance on Berenice's Hair." One by
one you must reverently seek and find them ; but to know them once
is to know them for all time like the swimmer's stroke, it never is
forgotten.
Home from the mountains one September long ago, depressed
that I scarcely knew one star from another, a book of blessed diagrams
fell into my hands and I went to work in earnest. Yet craning
neck out of windows, rushing wildly into the street to gaze
upward till pedestrians stopped and gazed with me ; reading at corner
lamps till everybody turned and stared this had its drawbacks.
Suddenly I thought of that common retreat in an Oriental home
the roof. Drawing a bolt, 1 climbed steep steps, lifted a heavy
scuttle, fell on an expanse of tin and found myself in heaven. Star
upon star unseen below responded to my appeal, and altogether it
was a royal welcome from
That inverted bowl they call the sky
Whereunder crawling coopt we live and die.
To compare the diagram with the real thing took endless trips
down and back again, there was many a seance on the roof before
conjecture became certainty, but come the understanding did at last
and to stay.
Given the Great Dipper, the rest, if you care, is comparatively
easy. Although I had discovered Vega directly overhead and in
the west Arcturus, that favorite of Peary who in the lonely Arctic
watched it circling far to the south of him, the wider outlook of
the roof revealed a distinctly foreign star, the first-magnitude Spica,
in Virgo, glittering close to the southwest horizon before leaving
for its winter home in the tropics. Vega, in Lyra, is believed to be
the centre of our system ; millions of years hence it may be our polestar
instead of bright Polaris, so much more truly that, in its
close proximity to the Pole, than those insignificant Antarctic
worlds in like situation. The Southern Cross, which in the south
sailors depend upon to steer by, is nearly thirty degrees from the
in