astronomer. He decided to go on to America, and attend classes at a famous American University. So again we put to sea. But now we were so very dilapidated that our master no longer wore us. Thus again we were shut away from the sights of a voyage, and could only learn what our friends were kind enough to repeat. But we recollect that the sea was very smooth so that hardly anybody was sick.

"Soon after our arrival in New York, our master had us repaired so that we became very presentable again, and so it happened that he wore us upon a very long journey by rail to Los Angeles. One very funny little moment we recollect happened. Our master had never ridden on a train at night before until this trip, for in Europe the journeys are usually short ones. The sleeping car out of Chicago was very full, and he could only secure an upper berth. It was quite late at night when he went on the train, and immediately retired, leaving his shoes below, as is usual, to be blacked by the porter. When our master succeeded in getting out of his lofty bed the next morning, he reached for a shoe which he saw dimly under the curtain in the semidarkness of the made-up sleeping car. But as he pulled it out to stick his foot in it, the shoe violently resisted because there was already a lady's foot in it and there came from above a little scream and giggle. As soon appeared, my master's traveling companion was a charming girl returning home from her school in the East. Naturally he had to beg of her a thousand pardons for the incident of

Both of

the shoe, which she very graciously granted when she saw how handsome and charming he was. them seemed to have a very pleasant journey. "But we must have done with our story.

"At length we got shabby the second time, and our master gave us away to the colored man who now owns us. We may look old and worn out, but when we have a new pair of soles we shall yet be able to take a great many steps."

Dusk was coming. The company expressed its thanks and wonder at the remarkable tale of the two old shoes, and then, as shoes are not always able to retire early when upon their masters' and mistresses' feet, they all took advantage of the present opportunity and wished one another good night.

CHAPTER XVII

THE EARLY MORNING VISITOR

Oh! It's nice to get up in the morning,
But it's nicer to lie in bed.

HARRY LAUDER.

THERE is a mountain in Arizona called by the Indian name of Harqua Hala. Fringed about the base with giant cactuses like great prickly green posts twenty or thirty feet high, it rises 3,000 feet sheer out of a desert. Every approach to the summit is so bold, and ruggedly defended by gigantic cliffs and boulders, that it is only with difficulty that a narrow trail for animals has been picked out. Dust spouts whirl along in the desert below as they do in the Sahara, but nevertheless it rains so powerfully sometimes that the mountain trail is nearly obliterated by the rush of water. At such times the wind roars and screams about the mountain top so fiercely that a man can hardly stand, and it seems as if the very rocks themselves would be blown down. On the other hand, nothing could be more peaceful and serene than the old mountain as it usually lies under a deep blue cloudless sky with scarcely a breath of air stirring.

On the very top of Harqua Hala the United States

Government maintains an observatory, where they study only one of the stars, the nearest one, our sun. There is no telescope, for the sun is bright enough to furnish all the light they need without condensing his rays at all. But something has to be done to stop his rays from wandering from the east to the west every day, and to keep them shining directly into the observatory. The machine that does this is called a "cœlostat," because it apparently makes the heavenly body stand still instead of marching every day regularly from the eastern to the western horizon, as the sun and almost all the stars do. Of course, this daily motion of theirs is only seeming. Really, it is the earth that turns on its axis and the sun and stars do not go round the earth every twenty-four hours, as people used to think they did before the year 1543, when Nicholas Copernicus of Poland published his book on the motions of the heavenly bodies.

We must turn aside just a minute to think of the great men of his time. He was born at Thorn, on the river Vistula, February 19, 1473. About the year 1400-we do not know the year exactly-was born Gutenberg, who invented printing for Europe about 1450, just when Christopher Columbus, who discovered the new world, was a baby in his cradle. Four of the greatest artists of all time, Leonardo da Vinci (1452), Michelangelo (1475), Raphael (1483), and Titian (1487), and also Martin Luther, the champion of the Protestant Reformation (1483), were all born in the same half century with Copernicus. Truly, the

PLATE 11.-The Sun and its surroundings. The two black dots are sun-spots. They are not always present but form and disappear. The white clouds around them are faculæ. Detailed structure all over the disk is caused by clouds of hydrogen or calcium gas. Outside the edge are crimson-colored flames called prominences.