Mower County transcript., 1871-08-10

Having tea party all by herself
| Quiet minute, in mischief, no doubt,
| Pulling the needles and thimblcs about,
| Sewing her apron, demurr as you please;
Any one got such a dear little teases
Printing her hands in the soft tempting flour,
| Tumbcs and bumps twenty mes IN an hour;
| Tungns the yarn and unraveling the lace,
Doing 1t ali with tho prctiicst grace.
MOti,r is sCOlding her very bad girl,
Says that slc sets the whole house in whirl;
| Looks at her p uting tht re-, down at her knees
Clasps TO her heart again dear little tcaze.
-LiNtc CORPORAL.
NIGHT.
"Little children, can you tell me what
shape night is?"
Might! Bless us, no! We did not
know it had any shape"
"Oh, but it has though; listen, and l
will tell you all about it. First, however,
what Is night, think you?"
| Darkness.
every true, so far, but what makes the
darkness? Stand up, now, with your back
to the bright fire, and tell me what makes
that darkness, like the picture of black
giants baby on tho opposite wally
"Your shadow, certainly.
"Wcll, then, cannot you guess what the
darkn. So of night is? DO you suppose
your plump little person can cast that
terriblelooking shallow, and the great,
round earth, SO thich and so solid, cast none
at all, but lot the sunlight through it, like
a bit Of glass or drop of rain-wa No.,
indeed. The earth casts 4 mighty shadow
of it's own, for little children to lie down
and slecp in, when they arc tired of work
and play. 1t always has its tire-which is
the sun on one side, and it's shadow,
stretching far, far away, beyond the
mountain tops, and ycyond the clouds,
and beyond the moon on the other.
"lf the Garth stood quite still before the
fire-I mean the sun-it would have day
on the same side and night ON the same
side all the time, SO that, after you had
eaten your supper, if you wanted to sleep
under the cool and quiet curtains of the
night, you would have to travel ever SO
many miles to go to bed, and when you
had had your sleep out, all the way back
again into the bright borders of the busy
day That would bc very inconvcnient in
decd, but by no means the worst part Of it,
for nothing could grow on one half the
earth if the sun never shOnc there, because
cannot live without light-but also colder
than the coldest Writer night. Other ter
ribc things, too, would come TO pass
more than you or have any idea of.
"The dear old mothcrly earth knows
better how to take care of her children,
aid spins constantly round and round like
a huge top, 50 very, very fast that in
twenty four hours she has turned quite
round, and has g ven us the whole of one
day, and the whole of one night, full of
warm sunshine aud sweet, quiet sleep,
without our even having to 60 out of our
own homes in search Of either.
"If were to tell you, in figures, just
how big the world is, and just how fast it
turns round, am afraid you would not
be much the wiser, because you are not
used to think Of such large numbers, and
would not understand at all how great
give you some idea of the size of the
earth if tell you that the deepest seas and
highest mountains upon it are less in pro.
portion to its whole bulk than the little
roughnesscs ON the skin Of au orange are
to the size of the fruit.
oceans aud rivers are like the scratch
es; mountains that pierce the clouds like
the uneven places in your football.
"You can we'll imagine that such mon.
| strous top Us that must SPIN pretty fast
to turn all the way round in few hours.
Ii it does not spin faster than your tops
and tctOtums, our nights would last So
many y. ars that long before one of them
was over we should die of cold and star.
vation.
"Think, too, what great, long shadow
a ball SO large. and at such vast distance
from the sun, must cast! Dear me! If
you thought of it all the days of your life,
you could never think of anything half 80
long as the shadow of the carta.
"Now that you know what night is,
fhof 10 roa11u nulv shadow Won will
not be SO surprised to learn that it has
distinct form, for am sure you never in
your life saw or heard Of a shadow that
had no shape at all.
"You will wonder, perhaps, how people
know so much about the size and form OF
it when no one has ever been where the
whole of it could be seen at once, even if
it were possible to see it in that way,
which, for reasons that I will explain to
you some day, it is not. But there are
always good many wise men in the world
who spend their whole lives in reading and |
writing, and looking at the STARS through |
telescopes, and ciphering and thinking, |
and putting this and that together, until
they find out great many wonderful
things; and all that little folks, like you
and me, can do, is TO believe what they
tell us, and try TO understand as much as
VIC can
Let us believe, then, that they have
discovered exactly how large the sun, and |
earth, and moon are, and exactly how far |
they are apart, ard that they are all !
round, like balls, or nearly SO, aud think.
after we have taken this for granted, we
can manage to understand something
about tho form OF the shadow that our
earth casts out into space; but you must
be- very attentive, or you may not hear all
have to say, and learn nothing from it,
and that would be pity.
"lf you had small light behind you-
the flame of q lamp, for instance-and
wall before you, at some distance, your
shadow, cast by tho small light on the
wall, would hc larger than yourself; if
there were another wall farther OIL. your
shadow ON that would he larger still, and
ir YOU could have one sufficiently far off,
you would cas-! \ shallow upon 1t large
enough to cover the whole earth; neither
wound it stop there, but - on aud on,
growing bigger and bigG' ras it went. 50,
5un Sc, when you have light behind
you smaller than yourself, your shadow
continues to incr, asc in size the farther IL
extends.
"if, however, you had very large
light behind you say as large as the side
OF a housr--and wall before you, your
shadow would bc smaller than youlsclf:
on wall at Il greater distances it would
bc smaller still, and 80 on, until it would
at last como to q point and vanish. Now,
this is cxactly the case with the shadow
of our world, for the sun is great deal
larger than the earth, so that, although its
shadow is very long indeed, it yet grows
gradually SMALLER all the way, and comes
a, last to pnint II you think "t it
tur minute, you Will moi find it hard to
understand that such q shadow, cast 10y u
round ball, must be- what is called cone
shapcd--that is, shaped like u sugar loaf,
or the cAlinguishrr Of a candle, or the
paper cornucopia you hal last Christmas
full of sugar-plums.
ut is, then, under this great conc
shaped shadow you sleep every night, and
while you are dreaming it passes swiftly
over your bed, lifting its mighty head up,
up farther than your thoughts can follow
it., beyond tho pathway OF the distant
moon.
THAT reminds me to tell you, what l
dare say you have already guessed, that
the moon III its regular travels round us
sometimes passes through the earth's
nis lit shadow, and b, comes what VIC call
',clipsed,' or hidtoa. This happens about
twice a year. 1t is not often entirely
ridden, however, but more frequently
passes somewhere across the edge Of the
great shadow, SO that We can see large