WOO THE SUNLIGHT 301 



feet thick every year. At the distance of our moon, 

 240,000 miles away, its heat would flash the earth 

 into gas. 



We live in a fast age the fast auto, fast trotter, 

 fast everything. But to make the run from Earth 

 to Sun, the fastest auto, at sixty miles an hour, 

 without stopping, requires 175 years. The Ken- 

 tuckian trotter which has just broken the world's 

 record at 2 :3J, to trot from Earth to Sun at the 

 same speed without stopping, requires about 360 

 years. Yet the Sunlight starting this moment from 

 the Sun, bounding on the waves of Ether, at the 

 speed of 196,000 miles per second, will reach you 

 and perhaps be the light in which you will be read- 

 ing before you finish this chapter. 



And what light! 1,575,000,000,000,000,000,000,- 

 000,000 one octillion five hundred and seventy- 

 five septillion candle power. The brightest light 

 which can be made by Man, interposed between the 

 eye and the Sun, is a black spot on the Sun. 



Sunlight coming from such a wonderful ball of 

 fire, at such wonderful speed, so wonderfully bright, 

 no wonder its work is wonderful. Radiating with 

 every ray of heat from every point of the Sun's area, 

 it is, in a sense, equal in quantity to the quantity of 

 heat. Divide the sum total by 2,200,000,000. 

 Earth catches only one of these parts, the one two 

 billion two hundred millionth part of the whole. 

 The rest is intercepted by other worlds, or lost in 

 the abysses of infinite space. 



Yet what magic power this minute fraction. It 



