150 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 



studies naturally grew in scope and intensity as A, matured and 

 as his general geographical knowledge increased. 



This, really geographical aspect of A.'s map studies is a com- 

 bination of three kinds of interest: 



1. The romance of the far-away, the appeal that foreign lands 

 have for an imaginative mind, the wonders of the unknown — the 

 imaginative interest. 



2. The thirst of knowledge of the wide world, the desire to 

 know the exact location of places, the need of orientation — the 

 scientific interest. 



3. The similarities and differences between different places 

 as to their coast-lines, surface, irrigation, etc., as seen on the map, 

 bring out questions, awaken A.'s reasoning, and serve as basis for 

 his contemplations, discussions and hypotheses. This is the philo- 

 sophical interest. Thus, many a hypothesis has he formed concern- 

 ing the origin of different islands, of some coast-lines. One of 

 these is Ihat the Aleutian islands used to be part of Alaska. Simi- 

 larl3s he has formed hypotheses concerning celestial bodies. Here 

 is what he thought of the moon at the age of five years and 

 eight months, as nearly as possible in hi« own words : 



"The moon is like the letter O, with a big hole inside. In 

 the daytime all the sunight collects there in that hole. And at night 

 these sun rays shine, and the moon looks bright. But there are some 

 terribly high mountains on earth. They throw their shadows on the 

 moon, which makes dark spots there, and these dark spots look 

 like "the man in tlie moon." 



A. v/anted oncu to look up on his map the "terribly high moun- 

 taius" that cause the man in the moon to show up, and upon this 

 occasion informed me of his hypothesis. 



Another time, when he was fight years and four months old, 

 he said : "Oh, I know what'il help us in our history. You see, we 

 are learning now about Captain Smith. Now. I'll tell the teacher 

 that there is a star, on which we see now what happened on it 

 vi'hen Captain Smith lived. / can say that, can't I.'' Light travels 

 so long from some stars, there surely is among them one from which 

 it takes thei light to travel so long, so long, you know, the time 

 since Captain Smith lived. Don't you think so?" Then he thought 

 a while and chuckled, and then exclaimed, "Well, mam.ma ! If It 

 take light so long to come to us from the stars, hov/ long would 

 it take sound to come? If there was any sound there^suppO;e there 

 is a round — why. it would not reach us for so long. And — well — how 

 do we know? Maybe there are sounds there; but the first sound 

 that ever happened there m,aybe could not come to us yet, since 



