South-eastern Independent. (McConnelsville, Ohio) 1871-1871, 1871-08-04
NIGHT.

hItOn ~ udQ
"Oh, but it has though; listen, and
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 the opposite wall?
"Your shadow, certainly.
"Well, then, cannot you guess what the
darkness of night is Do you suppose
your plump little person can cast that
terrible-looking shadow, and the great,
round earth, so thich and so solid, cast none
at all, but let the sunlight through it, like
a bit Of glass or drop of rain-water? No,
indeed. The earth casts mighty shadow
of its own, for little children to lie down
and sleep in, when they are tired of work
and play. 1t always has its fre-which is
the sun-on one side, and its shadow,
stretching far, far away, beyond the
mountain-tops, and yeyond the clouds,
and beyond the moon on the other.
IF the earth stood quite still before the
fire. 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 be very inconvenient in
deed, but by no means the worst part of it,
for nothing could grow on one half the
earth if the sun never shone there, because
it would not only be dark-and plants
cannot live without light-but also colder
than the coldest winter night. Other ter
rible things, too, would come to pass
more than you or have any idea of
"The dear old motherly earth knows
better how to take care of her children,
and spins constantly round and round like
a huge top, so very, very fast that in
twenty-four hours she has turned quite
round, and has given us the whole of one
day, and the whole of one night, full of
warm sunshine and sweet, quiet sleep,
without our even having to go out of our
own homes in search of either.
off / were to tell you, in figures, Just
how big the world is, and Just how fast it
turns round, 1 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
they really are. Perhaps, however, it will
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
roughnesses on the skin of an orange are
to the size of the fruit.
oceans and rivers are like the scratch
es; mountains that pierce the clouds like
the uneven places in your football.
"You can well imagine that such mon
strous top as that must spin pretty fast
to turn all the way round in few hours.
If it does not spin faster than your tops
and tetotums, our nights would last so
many years that long before one of them
was over we should die of cold and star
vation.
Think, too, what a great, long shadow
a ball so large. and at such vast distance
from the sun, must castl Dear me- If
you thought of it all the days of your life,
you could never think of anything half so
long as the shadow of the earth.
"Now that you know what night is,
that it is really only shadow, you will
not be so surprised to learn that it has a
distinct form, for l am sure you never in
your life saw or heard of 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 / will explain to
you some day, it is not. But there are
always a 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 a 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
we 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, and that they are all
round, like balls, or nearly so, and think,
after we have taken this for granted, we
can manage to understand something
about the form of the shadow that our
earth casts out into space; but you must
be very attentive, or you may not hear all
l have to say, and learn nothing from it,
and that would be pity.
"lf YOU had small light behind you
the flame of lamp, for instance-and a
wall before you, at some distance, your
shadow, cast by the small light on the
wall, would be larger than yourself; if
there were another wall farther ot,syour
shadow on that would Oe larger still, and
if YOU could have one sufficiently far off,
YOU would cast shadow upon 1t large
enough to cover the whole earth; neither
would it stop there, but go on and on,
growing bigger and biggeras 1t went. 50,
You see, when you have a light behind
you smaller than yourself, your shadow
continues to increase in size the farther 1t
extends.
i "If, however, you had a very large
light behind you-say as large as the side
of house-and a wall before you, your
shadow would be smaller than yourself;
on wall at a greater distance it would
be smaller still, and so on, until it would
at last come to point and vanish. Now,
this is exactly 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, 1t yet grows
gradually smaller all the way, and comes
at last to a point. II you think OF 1t
for minute, you will not find it hard to
understand that such shadow, cast by q
round ball, must be what is called cone
shsped-that Is, shaped Ike a sugsr-loaf
or the extinguisher Of a candle, or the
paper cornucopia you had last Christmas
full of sugar-plums.
at is, then, under this great cone
shaped shadow you sleep every night, anc
while you are dreaming it passes swiftly
over your bed, lifting its mighty head up
up farther than your thoughts can follow
it, beyond the pathway Of the distan
moon.
"That reminds me to tell you, what
dare say you have already guessed, tina
the moon in its regular travels round u
sometimes passes through the earth