LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



morning. On these midnight walks they used to study 

 the stars and talk of the wonderful work of Kepler 

 and Copernicus. There were various requests that 

 Caroline should go to London and sing, but she stead- 

 fastly refused to appear on a stage excepting where 

 her brother led the orchestra. 



About this time Caroline wrote a letter home, which 

 missive, by the way, is still in existence, wherein she 

 says: "William goes to bed early when there are no 

 concerts or rehearsals. He has a bowl of milk on the 

 standbesidehim, andhe reads Smith's Harmonics ' and 

 Ferguson's 'Astronomy.' I sit sewing in the next room 

 and occasionally he will call to me to listen while he 

 reads some passage that most pleases him. So he 

 goes to sleep buried beneath his favorite authors, and 

 his first thought in the morning is how to obtain instru- 

 ments so we can study the harmonics of the sky." 

 And a way was to open they were to make their own 

 telescope what larks! Brother and sister set to work 

 studying the law of optics. In a second-hand store 

 they found a small Gregorian reflector with an aper- 

 ture of about two inches. 



This gave them a little peep into the heavens, but was 

 really only a tantalization. They set to work making 

 a telescope tube out of pasteboard. It was eighteen 

 feet long, and the "board" was made in the genuine 

 pasteboard way by pasting sheet after sheet of paper 

 together until the substance was as thick and solid as 

 a board. 



So this brother and sister worked at all odd hours 

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