THE EARTH SUPPOSED TO BE FIXED. 173 
parents went into the house, and looked anxiously 
for the children, but they were not.—I said, I would 
go and awake the children, exclaimed the mother, 
and behold they are not here, but are gone.—The 
parents saw the children, and pursued to seize 
them ; but the children, the boy first and his sister 
after him, flew up to the skies. The end of their 
girdles being towards the earth, the parents took 
hold of them, and all were carried to the sky, and 
became stars. 
Like most uninformed persons, they supposed 
the earth was stationary, being borne on the 
shoulders of a god, fixed upon a rock, which they 
called the rock of foundation supported by pillars, 
and that the sun, moon, and stars, moved from 
one side of the arched heavens to the other. 
When we at first endeavoured to impart to them 
more correct ideas of astronomy, and exhibited a 
terrestrial globe, explanatory of the shape of our 
earth, and illustrative of that of the moon, of the 
planets, and other heavenly bodies, they were 
greatly surprised; but when we called their 
attention to a celestial globe, and represented to 
them the relative position of the heavenly bodies, 
and explained the motion of the planets of our 
system round the sun, they were at first invariably 
sceptical. It could not possibly be, they said, 
that the earth went round, as all things remained 
stationary during the twenty-four hours ; which 
would not be the fact, if the earth on which they 
stood moved. Frequently they have said, If sucl 
was the fact, when our beds w T ere turned down¬ 
wards we should all fall off, and all our vessels 
of food, &c. would be upset or lost. Finding, 
however, that we persevered in the expression 
of our sentiments to the contrary, they would 
