332 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside 



member what other metals, if any, beside copper, 

 burn with a green light, but I wondered if it were 

 not that metal in the photosphere of the emerald 

 star which gave its beautiful color. If the sun be 

 a copper sun, then its planets must be copper plan- 

 ets. May not the whole system, of which the cop- 

 per sun is a center, be a sort of verdigris hell for 

 cheeky people! This new idea is respectfully sub- 

 mitted to theologians, with the suggestion that in 

 making out their eschatological system I will con- 

 tribute my copper sun, with its copper worlds, as a 

 place where moral brassiness may be eliminated by 

 attrition. 



One is almost always led by the contemplation 

 of the clear heavens at night to think of the future 

 state of existence. In such a presence one does 

 not like to think of his life as a phosphorescent 

 bubble, rising out of a marsh, glowing and floating 

 a moment on the surface or drifting a little way on 

 the air, and then vanishing out of being. One 

 would like to live and have something of the higher 

 starry life. The astronomer spoils the skies by his 

 measurements and his thermometers, especially 

 when he describes the zero of cold supposed to 

 exist in the interplanetary spaces, and when he tells 

 us that he has to employ a line a hundred million 

 of miles long for his foot-rule. The stars do not 

 look so. They are, to all appearances, very soci- 

 able, and shine as closely together as a church 

 choir. While they are sociable they do not appear 



