The Red Cloud chief., 1880-04-01

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When he Askod VIA, IL wa people
would .ay. "Oh. that's the man in the
moon.~ - though tina; settled the mat
ter and IL wasnt necessary IN say any
thing more about 10; and 30 be wAs lcfs
10 puzzle {; out. NJ one time discovering
Q man with q bundle of sticks across his
shoulder. and another time \ great
staring face looking down upon the
world like o OF the pumpkin lanterns
which boys In the country proudly cs-
hibii on dark nights. Al 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 atsou, 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 Ia dwell in the moon
until the end Of all things. The Ger
mar legend, which does not. however.
refer TO Moses, tells that the faggot
bearer Was met by q man who said to
him: "Do you know tina, this Is sun
day on earth, when all mus, rest from
their labors?"
"Sunday on earth or Monday in
Heaven, IL Is all one Ia me-" said the
wood cutter.
Then bear your bundle forever"
answered the other. sand As you value
not Sunday on earth you shall be a per
petual moon-dsy 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 Ia
it. Chaucer speaks Of the man as,
Brrins a bush 81 thurni. ON his back
Which for his theft might eliinc 80 ner the
Heaven.
Shakespeare, in the Midsummer
Nights Dream" makes Ounce the Car
penter say, One mus come in with a
bush of thorns and a lantern and say he
comes in to disfgure or to presen, the
person of 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,
II never profits man io steal
The idea of the moon as a thief pre-
vailed also among the Swedes, who be-
ieved that the figures in the moo 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 il this story has not
something to do with the nursery
rhyme,
Jack and Gu went mp the hill
To draw a pail Of water.
especially since the rhyme is very old
and came originally from Scandinavia.
Ii 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 vas 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 imagina-
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 noun
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 be sure, had anticipated
something of this sort, and their idea
was that the dark places were cas-
whereas the telescope showed that there
was not q 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
is nothing more or less than a dried-up
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 q look at the moon through
. good telescope.
What will you see? Well, if you have
q face in the oon 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 10 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
to be craters of extinct volcanoes.
OF course, seen through the telescope,
ali resemblance to a face will disappear,
and unless the telescope is very large it
will require q considerable effort OF
to make pits out of the dark
spots and mountains out of the bright
,nes. II the telescope is a good one.
however, you will not only be able to
these features but you
ook down into the pits, some Of which
ire thousands of feet deep, and see the
immense rocks and powders with which
he door is strewed. The best telescopes
BRING the moon, which is really 142, 600
distant, within one hundred and
wenty miles; that is to sag, through
me of these glasses q mountain in the
noon five or six thousand feet high will
eem about as large As as the White
when looked at by the
lnassisted eye from the Catskill Noun
ain House. That is about a close a
comparison as the Professor is able to
make.
Some of the mountains in the moon,
are much higher than that. One
calculated to be sixteen thousand feet
Ugh, and the astronomers think they
ave discovered one which is not less
han twenty three thousand. On the
1hole, considering how bleak and barren
be planet is, and that it has no air,
rater or vegetation, and, 50 far as dis
overed, no inhabitants, the Professor
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