The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-01
ABOUT MOoNSHINE.
Expectations, Magic and Fantasies As
 socIated With Moon.

From the New York Sun.
 The moon is shining full upon my face as I lie in bed; it is rather strange to awaken to her direct stare. She Is a pagan priestess and is turing me out to wirship occult powers. Centuries of Chris tianity have not converted her.
 There is a common superstition against sleeping in the moonlight; you must not even drink water, be 1t from cup or river or fountain, on which the moonlight Is falling The sun is wholesome, life giv- ing. purifying, an enemy of mystery and of evil spirits; the moon is weird and un- canny, a weaver of magic spells, the pat roness of all that is obscure and ghostly.
 She sways the tides of the sea and the minds of men. Many persons if they found the moon shining on them at night would arise and draw curtain.
 But I will laugh at such absurd fantasies and cast away the dreams of moonridden men. She Is the sheperdess of the skies, leading forth the stars and the fleecy cloudlets to their broad azure pastures. She is the exiled wife of the sun, and the stars are their children.
 She is the friend of the harvesters, as her light falls in a calm mellow flood across the corn fields in which they are laboring. It is beautiful to see her bath ing the shocks of grain; there can be
 
 stream of light. though there may be something mystic.
 She sees some things that the sun can never see; he is blinded with excess of light Compared with his, her light is as water compared with wine. It can wash the tree tops in silver, but it cannot pene- trate their umbrageous depths; 1t cannot illume the shadows, as the sun can.
 But it can do something that the sun 1ass fhA I.ntT TAef 1 barest scene poetical and can transfigure the unsightly into loveliness and symme- try It has the glory of the half light; the depth and suggestiveness of partial ob- scurity Sunlight is at its lest in its ris- ing or it's setting; but the moonlight is at it's best in its noontide, though the moon herself may appear most alluring when she is a mere fleeting crescent.
 Heine tells us how when he was boy, the moon called him from Is bed into the garden, where a lovely statute of Greek goddess was lying among the grass and bushes He tells us how the thought of that statue brought him to the spot-how he stopped and pressed his lips passion ately on those of the goddess; and the kiss thrilled his memory ever after, the first impa ssioned kiss of youth.
 It was the moon that wrought the magic. The sun would have stared rudely
 
 the dead faith that it symbolized. but the moon hved 1t and sympathized with it.
 For the mocn's whole life is a reflection and a memory; she is the nurse of recol- Iections. the friend of forlorn hopes, the remembrance of dead faiths and bygone fancies. She can reach corners of the mind that the sun does not enter.
 Sometimes these corners are dank and noisome, haunts of remorse or of mad fr hnr flt tflf oha rITI f purify them if she could. It Is not her fault that we deem her the mother of madness and style foolish dreams as moonshine.
 She can smile peacefully and lovingly on the slumber of a child and bring noth. ing but images. .of fairyland to soothe its slumbers; she can gaze fondly on tho meetings of youth and maiden, where there is nothing but innocent love and faith It is not her fault if the vicious and the unwholesome and the c-fmina thrust themselves under her notice. She