The Red Cloud chief., 1880-02-26

age of the world and in nearly eveu
nation other children besides himself
had been CURIOUS about this matter. and
that innumerable stories hsd been in
vented To satisfy their curiosity.
One Of these stories, perhaps the most
ancient, relates tina. III. man in the
moon Is the man who was found By
Moses gathering sticks on the Sabbath.
aud that a. a punishment for his crime
he was condemned ia dwell in the moon
until the end If all things. The Ger
man legend, which does not, however,
refer 10 Moses, tells that the fsggoi
bearer was met by = man who said 10
him: DO you know that this is sun
day on earth, when all must rest from
their labors?"
Sunday on earth or Monday in
Heaven, il is al one TO me-" said the
wood cutter.
"Then bear your bundle forever"
answered the other, and a. Won value
not Sunday on earth YOU shall be 4 per,
petual moon-day in heaven; and you
shall stand for eternity in the moon, a
warning Ia all Sabbath-breakers."
So the man was caught up with his
sticks into the moon, where he stands
yet.
This story with variations i told in
all countries. Even the poets allude Ia
il. Chaueer speaks Of the man a.,
Berinx a bush Of tl,orni- on his back
Which for his theft might cline - nsr the
Heaven.
Shakespeare, in the midsummer
Nights Dream" makes Ounce the Car
pentcr say, One must come in with A
bush of thorns and 4 lantern and say he
comes in % disfigure or To present the
person If Moonshine." And an old
poet Of the twelfth century named
Necham, who wrote in Latin, says,
see the rustic in the moon.
How his bundle weighs him down,
. Thus his sticks the truth reveal,
IL never profits mar to steal.
The idea of the moon rs a thief pre-
vailed also among the Swedes, who be-
lieved that the figures in the moon were
those If two children who had been
caught up from the earth with their
bucket in which they had been drawing
water from the well Byrgir. The Pro-
fessor wonders if this story has not
something to do with the nursery
rhyme,
Jack and Gil went mp the hill
To draw "A pail OF water,
especially since the rhyme is very old
and came originally from Scandinavia.
1t would he easy, You see, for people to
fancy that when the moon grew old and
the figures disappeared they had tum-
bled down a hill. or gone almost any
where else out Of sight.
Now the class must remember that
when these stories were invented there
weren't n telescopes or magnifying
glasses. Poor old job, who sat on his
ash heap and talked so beautifully about
the stars, could see no more of them
than his unassisted eyesight showed
him, and AnaXagoras and Ptolemy and
C~opernicus, who were sill of them great
astronomers, could see no more-unless
their eyesight wa better, which. on
sidering Jobs Affections, the Professor
thinks quite likely. II was not until
Calico invented the telescope and
turned il upon the moon that all these
ridiculous fancies about the person who
was supposed to inhabit it were blown
away. What peoples excited magma
tons had for thousands of years magni-
fied-or. TO speak more correctly,
dwarfed into a human face or a man
with sticks. proved TO be great mou
tains and pits and craters on the rugged
surface of the planet, lit up here with
the sunlight and throwing in another
place the deepest and blacklist shadows.
Wise men. to he sure, had anticipated
something of this sort, and their idea
was that the dark places were seas;
whereas the telescope showed that there
was o a drop of water anywhere on
the moon. And vet the wise men were
not so far out of the way, for the tel
escope showed also that the dark places
were the beds of seas where probably
the waters once rolled just a they do
now upon the earth. Indeed, the moon
is nothing more or less than a dried up
earth, and if the class wants TO know
how this planet Of ours would look il
the fires were all gone out inside and
the waters all drained off outside, let
them take a look at the moon through
q good telescope.
What will you see? Well, if You have
fancied a face in the moon you will find
the eyes TO be two Of these great dark
pits, the nose to be a mountain range
between them, and the mouth to be an
other gaping pit, called by astronomers
the Sea of Clouds. Besides these you
will see other pits out of which rise
great mountains, and which are sup
posed 10 be craters Of extinct volcanoes.
OF course, seen through the telescope,
all resemblance TO a face will disappear,
and unless the telescope is very large il
will require 4 considerable effort OF
imagination to make pits out of the dark
spots and mountains out of the bright
ones. If the telescope is a good one.
however, YOU will not only be able to
distinguish these features but you can
look down into the pits, some of which
are thousands of feet deep, and see the
immense rocks and powders with which
the floor is strewed. The best telescopes
bring the moon, which is really IA, coo
miles distant, within one hundred and
twenty miles; that is to say, through
one of these glasses a mountain in the
400 five or six thousand feet high will
seem about as large as as the White
Mountains when looked at by the
unassisted eve from the Catskill Noun
tain House. That is about As close 8
comparison as the Professor is able to
make.
Some of the mountains in the moon,
though. are much higher than that. One
is calculated to be sixteen thousand feet
high, and the astronomers think they
have discovered one which is not less
than twenty-three thousand. On the
whole. considering how bleak AID barren
the planet is, and that it has no air,
water or vegetation, and, so far as dis
covered, nc inhabitants, the Professor
thinks he would very much prefer living
on the earth.-Christian Union.
When I have pieces of cold roast
pork in the house, I use in this way
Chop very fine, and if you have = little
piece of cold roast beef or beefsteak TO
chop with il, it improves it. Season
with salt. pepper, and sage, moissen
with q little milk or hot water, make
into little cakes ike fshballs, dust with
-four, and fry q nice brown on both