Sky Study gn 



bed, it will yet be light enough to read the papers. The sun not only sets' 

 late on that first summer day, but it appears early next morning. What a 

 beautiful spectacle a sunrise in June is ! Men of wealth will pay thousands 

 of dollars for pictures showing its glory, yet I suppose that not one boy in 

 five hundred ever saw the beauty of the birth of a new day in the sixth 

 month of the year, and with no price of admission at that* 



For only one day do the sun's rays fall directly on top of the head of 

 Tropic of Cancer Ham, who lives on the Island of Cuba just for one day, 

 after which the up and down rays travel back towards the Equator Shem.' 

 On the twenty-first of September Shem again has no shadow at noon, and 

 the almanac makers say that is the last day of summer, and tomorrow will 

 be the first day of autumn. Again it is very hot where Shem lives, but the 

 alligators and monkeys and the parrots do not seem to mind it. Where do 

 the up and down rays of the sun go next ? They keep going south, hunting 

 for the boy named Tropic of Capricorn Japhet, to warm him up, as was the 

 case with the boys in Cuba and at the Equator. The up and down rays do 

 not find the top of the head of the lad in the City of San Paulo, Brazil until 

 the last part of December, just four days before Christmas, and then the 

 almanac says this is the beginning of winter, and the shorter days of the 

 year, when we in the state of New York light the lamp at five o'clock in the 

 afternoon. Now, my boys and girls, do you understand why we have a 

 change of seasons ? Do you understand that the sun changes his manner of 

 pitching his rays at us ? That in winter, when he is over the head of the 

 Tropic of Capricorn Japhet in San Paulo, and making summer on that part 

 of the earth, to us people in the north, in the State of New York, he pitches 

 only slanting rays that do not hit us hard, and have but little power ? Thus 

 you will see that the rays of the sun that strike the earth direct blows, swing 

 back and forth like a pendulum, year after year, and century after century, 

 coming north as far as Tropic of Cancer Shem, but no farther, and then 

 swinging south as far as the boy named Tropic of Capricorn Japhet, and no 

 farther, just stopping and swinging back again towards the north. 



THE ZODIAC AND ITS SIGNS 

 Teacher's Story 



To be retold to pupils. 



The mysterious symbols of the Zodiac on the first pages of almanacs are 

 always a source of wonder and awe to children, and remain a life-long 

 mystery to most people except fortune tellers; and yet the Zodiac is the 

 simplest thing in the world to understand. However, the lesson should 

 not be given until after the children have had their lessons on the sun and 

 the shadow-stick, and also the lessons on the stars. 



The ancients who believed the earth stood still and the sun moved around 

 it, noticed inevitably that the path through the heavens pursued .by the sun 

 reached in summer a point farther north and higher up than in the winter, 

 and they naturally wished to map this path, so as to fix it in their minds and 

 writings. Nothing could be easier, for there in the skies were the eternal 

 stars always following the same fixed path through the heavens and never 

 wobbling up and down like the sun. So they chose the constellation which 

 marked the highest point in the sun's path for each month, and these con- 

 stellations might be likened to a stairway with six steps down toward the 



