Stories of Starland

<h2> THE STORY OF GIANT SUN. </h2> <p>"Sister, come here and talk to me. I am so tired of being alone."</p> <p>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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_14' name='Page_14'>[14]</SPAN></span> 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:</p> <h3 class="notop"> ANCIENT STORIES OF THE SUN. </h3> <p>"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.</p> <div class="figcenter p6"> <ANTIMG src="images/i-014.jpg" width-obs="550" height-obs="250" alt="EARTH SUPPOSED TO BE FLAT." /> <p class="caption">EARTH SUPPOSED TO BE FLAT.</p> </div> <p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_15' name='Page_15'>[15]</SPAN></span> 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.</p> <p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_16' name='Page_16'>[16]</SPAN></span> that during the night the gods made a new sun to be used the next day."</p> <p>"That must have kept them busy," said Harry, laughing.</p> <div class="figcenter p6"> <ANTIMG src="images/i-015.jpg" width-obs="550" height-obs="393" alt="ANCIENT IDEA OF THE EARTH." /> <p class="caption">ANCIENT IDEA OF THE EARTH.</p> </div> <p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_17' name='Page_17'>[17]</SPAN></span> 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."</p> <p>"But where does the sun really go to at night?" asked Harry curiously. "I should like to know."</p> <h3 class="notop"> HEAT OF THE SUN. </h3> <div class="figcenter p6"> <ANTIMG src="images/i-016.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="304" alt="ILLUSTRATING DAY AND NIGHT." /> <p class="caption">ILLUSTRATING DAY AND NIGHT.</p> </div> <p>"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; <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_18' name='Page_18'>[18]</SPAN></span> 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.</p> <p>"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."</p> <div class="figleft p6"> <ANTIMG src="images/i-017.jpg" width-obs="200" height-obs="211" alt="Huge Top" /></div> <p>"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."</p> <p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_19' name='Page_19'>[19]</SPAN></span> I go into the house and get a magnifying-glass."</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>"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.</p> <h3 class="notop"> DISTANCE OF THE SUN. </h3> <p>"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. <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_20' name='Page_20'>[20]</SPAN></span></p> <p>"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?"</p> <p>"It must be very far away, then," said Harry, "more than a hundred miles."</p> <p>"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.'"</p> <p>"Then I would say: 'Dear sir, I cannot go, as <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_21' name='Page_21'>[21]</SPAN></span> 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.</p> <p>"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."</p> <p>Harry laughed heartily at the idea, and thought again of poor Nellie's doll and the melting wax running like tears down its cheeks.</p> <p>"But suppose," he asked, his eyes bright with excitement, "someone fired a big cannon at the sun. Would the cannon-ball ever get there?"</p> <p>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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_22' name='Page_22'>[22]</SPAN></span> 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.</p> <p>"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?"</p> <p>"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."</p> <p>"Then I said: 'Don't be afraid, brother; the storm is three miles away.'"</p> <p>"Yes, I remember," said Harry; "and I thought you were very clever, and wondered how you knew."</p> <p>"It was not so wonderful, after all, was it?" said Mary, laughing.</p> <p>"Now tell me, sister," said Harry. "Supposing I had a very long arm, and stretched it <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_23' name='Page_23'>[23]</SPAN></span> out toward the sun, and touched it with the tip of my little finger. What would happen?"</p> <p>"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."</p> <p>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.</p> <p>"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?" <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_24' name='Page_24'>[24]</SPAN></span></p> <h3 class="notop"> SIZE OF THE SUN. </h3> <p>"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?"</p> <div class="figcenter p6"> <ANTIMG src="images/i-023.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="494" alt="Limb of the Sun" /></div> <p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_25' name='Page_25'>[25]</SPAN></span> 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."</p> <p>"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.</p> <p>"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." <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_26' name='Page_26'>[26]</SPAN></span></p> <p>"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?"</p> <h3 class="notop"> THE SUN IN THE DAYS OF ITS YOUTH. </h3> <p>"Ever so much larger," replied Mary.</p> <div class="figcenter p6"> <ANTIMG src="images/i-025.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="364" alt="THE SUN AND PLANETS FORMING OUT OF STAR-MIST." /> <p class="caption">THE SUN AND PLANETS FORMING OUT OF STAR-MIST.</p> </div> <p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_27' name='Page_27'>[27]</SPAN></span> 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.</p> <p>"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."</p> <p>"What is the sun made of?" asked Harry.</p> <p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_28' name='Page_28'>[28]</SPAN></span> 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."</p> <p>"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?"</p> <p>"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."</p> <p>"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. <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_29' name='Page_29'>[29]</SPAN></span> Hello! Nellie, come here and let me tell you all about GIANT SUN, and how he melted your dollie for you the other day."</p> <p>"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. <SPAN id='P29' name='P29'></SPAN></p> <h3 class="notop"> ON THE SETTING SUN. </h3> <div class='poetry-container'> <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> <p>Those evening clouds, that setting ray,</p> <p>And beauteous tint, serve to display</p> <p class="i2">Their great Creator's praise;</p> <p>Then let the short-lived thing called man,</p> <p>Whose life's comprised within a span,</p> <p class="i2">To Him his homage raise.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p>We often praise the evening clouds,</p> <p class="i1">And tints so gay and bold,</p> <p>But seldom think upon our God,</p> <p class="i1">Who tinged these clouds with gold.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p><span class="flright">&mdash;<span class='smcap'>Sir Walter Scott.</span></span></p> </div> </div></div> <p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_30' name='Page_30'></SPAN></span></p> <div class="figcenter p6"> <ANTIMG src="images/i-029.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="582" alt="GIANT SUN AND LITTLE EARTH." /> <p class="caption">GIANT SUN AND LITTLE EARTH.</p> <SPAN id='P31' name='P31'></SPAN></div> <h3> THE FOUR SUNBEAMS. </h3> <p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_31' name='Page_31'>[31]</SPAN></span></p> <p class="center"> BY M. K. B.</p> <div class='poetry-container'> <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> <p>Four little sunbeams came earthward one day,</p> <p>Shining and dancing along on their way,</p> <p class="i1">Resolved that their course should be blest.</p> <p>"Let us try," they all whispered, "some kindness to do,</p> <p>Not seek our own pleasuring all the day through,</p> <p class="i1">Then meet in the eve at the west."</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p>One sunbeam ran in at a low cottage door,</p> <p>And played "hide-and-seek" with a child on the floor,</p> <p class="i1">Till baby laughed loud in his glee,</p> <p>And chased with delight his strange playmate so bright,</p> <p>The little hands grasping in vain for the light</p> <p class="i1">That ever before them would flee.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p>One crept to the couch where an invalid lay,</p> <p>And brought him a dream of the sweet summer day,</p> <p class="i1">Its bird-song and beauty and bloom;</p> <p>Till pain was forgotten and weary unrest,</p> <p>And in fancy he roamed through the scenes he loved best,</p> <p class="i1">Far away from the dim, darkened room.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p>One stole to the heart of a flower that was sad,</p> <p>And loved and caressed her until she was glad,</p> <p class="i1">And lifted her white face again;</p> <p>For love brings content to the lowliest lot,</p> <p>And finds something sweet in the dreariest spot,</p> <p class="i1">And lightens all labor and pain.</p> <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_32' name='Page_32'>[32]</SPAN></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <p>And one, where a little blind girl sat alone,</p> <p>Not sharing the mirth of her playfellows, shone</p> <p class="i1">On hands that were folded and pale,</p> <p>And kissed the poor eyes that had never known sight,</p> <p>That never would gaze on the beautiful light</p> <p class="i1">Till angels had lifted the veil.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p>At last, when the shadows of evening were falling,</p> <p>And the sun, their great father, his children was calling,</p> <p class="i1">Four sunbeams sped into the west.</p> <p>All said: "We have found that in seeking the pleasure</p> <p>Of others, we fill to the full our own measure,"</p> <p class="i1">Then softly they sank to their rest.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p><span class="flright">&mdash;<span class='smcap'>St. Nicholas, December, 1879.</span></span></p> </div> </div> <SPAN id='P32' name='P32'></SPAN></div> <h3> THE SUN. </h3> <div class='poetry-container'> <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> <p>Somewhere it is always light;</p> <p class="i1">For when 'tis morning here,</p> <p>In some far distant land 'tis night,</p> <p class="i1">And the bright moon shines there.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p>When you've retired and gone to sleep,</p> <p class="i1">They are just rising there;</p> <p>And morning o'er the hill doth creep</p> <p class="i1">When it is evening here.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p>And other distant lands there be</p> <p class="i1">Where it is always night;</p> <p>For weeks the sun they never see,</p> <p class="i1">The stars alone give light.</p> <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_33' name='Page_33'>[33]</SPAN></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <p>But though 'tis dark both night or day</p> <p class="i1">It is as wondrous quite</p> <p>That when the night has passed away,</p> <p class="i1">The sun for weeks gives light.</p> </div> <div class="stanza"> <p>Yes, while you sleep the sun shines bright,</p> <p class="i1">The sky is blue and clear;</p> <p>For weeks and weeks there is no night</p> <p class="i1">But always daylight there.</p> </div> </div></div> <p><SPAN id='P34' name='P34'></SPAN> <span class='pagenum'><SPAN id='Page_34' name='Page_34'>[34]</SPAN></span></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />