THE REFRACTING TELESCOPE, 169 



earned wages recklessly for the gratification of his momentary desires 

 or fancies. Such a man is liable to be largely at the mercy of his em- 

 ployers. Although wages may be at starvation-point, he can not take 

 his labor to a better market elsewhere. When times are hard, he and 

 his family are likely to suffer. If the great majority of our working- 

 men could be persuaded to save something, however small the sum, 

 each week, the habits of economy and thrift thus acquired would be a 

 great gain to the nation : pauperism and crime would decrease ; the 

 comfort, self-respect, and independence of the people would increase ; 

 and there would be fewer interruptions to the business and industries 

 of the country growing out of troubles between laborers and employ- 

 ers, for the laborers would become more steady, trustworthy, and in- 

 dependent, less liable to rush recklessly into strikes, and would be less 

 at the mercy of an unfair employer. 



Were a system of postal savings-banks established and well con- 

 ducted, there is no doubt that large numbers of our laboring classes 

 would soon become depositors of small sums. Many working-men now 

 have great difficulty in keeping securely money which they wish to 

 save ; others often spend all their earnings for drink or the gratification 

 of their whims or fancies, when they would not do so if they had 

 some perfectly safe and convenient place to deposit the money where 

 it would bring them a little interest, and the fact of their having it be 

 kept a secret. The masses of the people have the greatest confidence 

 in the Government, and would gladly intrust their small savings to its 

 keeping, provided such a system of savings depositories were devised, 

 with such men in charge of it as would command their confidence. 

 It is a question whether at the present time our Congressmen could do 

 80 much for the working-man in any other way as by providing him 

 "with this means of helping himself. 



THE EEFKACTmG TELESCOPE. 



By CHAKLES P. HOWARD. 



THOSE who have looked through a large telescope under favor- 

 able atmospheric conditions, at one of those immense cyclones 

 which occasionally break out on the surface of the sun, have derived 

 from what they saw a very good idea of the origin of sunlight. They 

 have seen that the brightest portion of the surface of the sun consists 

 of columns of intensely hot metallic vapors, averaging about three 

 hundred miles in diameter, rising from its interior and glowing with 

 extreme brilliancy, from the presence of clouds formed, probably, of 

 shining particles of carbon precipitated from its vapor as the tops of 

 the columns reach the surface and lose heat by expansion and radia- 



