THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 269 



visit have we had up there alone with each 

 other and worlds. How quickly it sets one 

 apart from dull and low and ugly things and 

 thoughts. It kindles imagination at once, and 

 what realms it opens for daring flights, reveling 

 in its birthright privileges, and somewhow amid 

 the awful sublimities of an outlying universe 

 it feels at home. If the day has been taxing, 

 conditions being favorable we seek in the later 

 evening repose by communion with the stars, 

 and it never fails. They are so friendly and 

 sympathetic. They seek to know us and talk 

 to us and seem happiest when we are interested 

 in them. "Cold and unfeeling as the stars," 

 an oft-quoted sentence^ had never appealed to 

 us. 



We speak in this chapter of the more famil- 

 iar phases of practical astronomy because there 

 is so little known by the average person con- 

 cerning planets and stars and constellations, 

 their names, where found, the wonderful nebu- 

 las, how formed and what they teach, their 

 great distances, motion and speed. The reader 

 familiar with these things can easily skip it and 

 pass it over to the inexperienced. 



Look yonder to the north, there is that old 

 "dipper" — surely everybody knows the "Ursa 

 Major" and its pointers that indicate the "pole 



