The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-02-19


look up at the moon and wonder whai
the queer-looking figure might be thai
seemed TO inhabit the bright yellow disc
When he asked what il was people
would say, sob, that's the man in the
moon" as though that settled the mat
ter and il wasn't necessary to say any
thing more about il; and so he was left
TO puzzle it out: 1T one time discovering
man with a bundle of sticks across his
shoulder, and another time a great
staring face looking down upon the
world like one of the pumpkin lanterns
which boys in the country proudly ex-
hibit on dark nights At that time the
Professor did not know that in every
age Of the world and in nearly every
nation other children besides himself
had been curious about this matter, and
that innumerable stories had been in
vented TO satisfy their curiosity,
One of these stories, perhaps the most
ancient, relates that the man in the
moon is the man who was found by
Moses gathering sticks on the Sabbath,
and that as a punishment for his crime
he was condemned to dwell in the moon
until the end of all things. The Ger
man legend, which does not, however,
refer to Moses, tells that the faggot
bearer was met by man who said to
him: "Do you know that this is Sun
day on earth, when all must rest from
their laborsP"
"Sunday or earth or Monday in
Heaven, it is ali one to me-" said the
wOOd-cutter.
q Thar boa, x,our h,,Ddla forava,. >,
answered the other, " and as you value
not Sunday on earth you shall be a.per-
petual MONDAY in heaven; and you
shall stand for eternity in the moon, a
warning to all Sabbath-breakers."
So the man was caught up with his
sticks into the moon, where he stands
yet.
This story with variations is told in
all countries. Even the poets allude to
it. Chaucer speaks of the man as,
Boring bush of thornis on his back
Which for his theft might cline so ner the
Heaven.
Shakespeare, in the Midsummer
Nights Dream" makes Ounce the Car
penter say, "0ne must come in with a
bush of thorns and lantern and say he
comes in to disfgure or to present the
person of Moonshine." And an old
poet of the twelfth century named
Necham, who wrote in Latin, says,
See therustic in the moon,
How his bundle weighs him down;
Thus his sticks the truth reveal,
1t never profits man to steal
The idea of the moon as a thief pre-
vailed also among the Swedes, who be-
ieved that the figures in the moon were
those of 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 Gill went up the hill
To draw pail of water,
especially since the rhyme is very old
and came originally from Scandinavia.
1t would be 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 any 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
Copernicus, who were sill of them great
astronomers, could see no more-unless
their eyesight was better, which, con-
sidering Jobs affections, the Professor
thinks quite likely. 1t was not until
Calico invented the telescope and
turned it 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 human face or man /
with sticks, proved to be great noun
tains and pits and craters on the rugged
surface of the planet, lit up here with
the sunlight and throwing in another
place TIE deepest and blacklist shadows.
Wise men, to be sure, had anticipated
something of this sort, and their idea
was that the dark places were seas;
whereas the telescope showed that there
was not drop of water anywhere on
the moon. And yet 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 as they do /
now upon the earth. Indeed, the moon 1
is nothing more or less than a dried-up 4
earth, and if the class wants to know
how this planet of ours would look if
the fires were all gone out inside and
l,n Il ,.ff 10 1o4
them take look at the moon through
a good telescope.
What viii you see? Well, if you have
fancied 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
he Sea of Clouds. Besides these YOU
will see other pits out of which rise
yreat mountains, and which are sup
posed TO be craters of extinct volcanoes
Of course, seen through the telescope, ,
al resemblance TO face will disappear,
Nd unless the telescope is very large it
Will require a considerable effort of
to make pits out of the dark
'pots and mountains out of the bright
,nes. If the telescope is good one, 5
however, you will not only be able to
distinguish these features but you can .
ook down into the pits, some of which !
ire thousands of feet deep, and see the
immense rocks and powders with which
he floor is strewed. The best telescopes
1ring the moon, which is really 142, 900 ,
niles distant, within one hundred and
wenty miles; that is to say. through !
me of these glasses a mountain in the ;