MOON 



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MOON 



was the sensation of its season, and which is 

 still considered one of the most notable dramas 

 written in America. His lyric work gave him 

 rank, in the judgment of many critics, as the 

 most promising poet of his time. Gloucester 

 Moors, The Daguerreotype, An Ode in Time of 

 Hesitation and Good Friday Night show the 

 varying phases of his genius, and The Menagerie 

 is an especially striking discussion of evolution. 

 A second drama, The Faith-Healer, is interest- 

 ing and convincing as a "reading" drama, but 



on the stage it did not have the success of 

 The Great Divide. 



Moody was bora at Spencer, Ind., was gradu- 

 ated at Harvard, and for a time taught English 

 there and at Radcliffe. In 1895 he became in- 

 structor in English at the newly-founded Uni- 

 versity of Chicago, and six years later he was 

 made assistant professor. Though he was an 

 inspiring teacher, he disliked classroom work; 

 his published Letters show how the academic 

 atmosphere irked him. 



.OON, the satellite of the earth or- 

 dained at the Creation to "light the earth by 

 night." It moves in its own orbit round the 

 earth in 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes. From 

 the earliest days of history the moon has been 

 an object of human observation, speculation and 

 attraction. Poets call the moon the "Queen of 

 the Night" and other romantic names; it is 

 popularly recognized as the most attractive and 

 mysterious object in the heavens, and, except 

 the sun, the most dominating. 



Formation. It was once considered that the 

 rnoon was formerly a part of the earth cast off 

 into space, becoming finally a separate planet. 

 The planetesimal hypothesis accounts differ- 

 ently for the creation of the sun, earth and 

 moon (see NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS). The sun be- 

 came the center of a huge system, with the 

 earth as a satellite, the earth in turn having in 

 the moon a satellite. The moon is of the same 

 formation as the earth but the essence of the 

 composition has been exhausted. Some scien- 

 tists maintain that the earth is gradually cool- 

 ing, that in time in almost a countless number 

 of years, the earth will become dead and no life 

 will exist. The surface of the earth will then 

 be like that of the moon, lifeless and cold. 



Size, Weight and Distance. It seems incon- 

 gruous, in view of popular and romantic ideas 

 associated with the moon, to reduce it to meas- 

 urable size and weight. But modern science 

 takes no heed of legends and traditions and re- 

 gards the moon as a very natural and unroman- 



tic object. The diameter of the moon is 2,163 

 miles. Its average distance from the earth is 

 239,000 miles. At night, in some of its chang- 

 ing aspects, the moon appears to be close to 

 the earth, shedding its light in soft, soothing 

 rays, but in reality the distance between moon 

 and earth is much greater than is apparent. An 

 express train traveling at the rate of 60 miles 

 an hour would require 3,992 hours to travel 

 from the earth to the moon; that means a pe- 

 riod of perpetual travel at the rate of a mile 

 every minute for 166 days and 8 hours, a total 

 of 23 weeks and 6 days. In volume the moon 

 is 1/49 that of the earth, and to make up the 

 full mass and weight of the earth, 81 moons 

 \vould be required. The moon's density is 3.4 

 times that of water, the density of the earth 

 being 5.5. 



Atmosphere. The moon possesses no light of 

 its own, and all the heat it obtains it borrows 

 from the sun. There is probably an atmos- 

 phere surrounding the moon, but that atmos- 

 phere would not support life, as the people of 

 the earth understand life. The temperature on 

 the surface of the moon is estimated at about 

 200 to 300 below zero for two weeks of every 

 month. For the other two weeks the direct 

 rays of the sun probably raise the temperature 

 near its equator at least as high as that of boil- 

 ing water. It is apparent that no human being 

 could exist under such conditions. A tempera- 

 ture of a little over 100 F. is trying to all resi- 

 dents in temperate zones, while in the United 



