where it rested in great shining, golden waves. In her hand she held a
golden sceptre, on the top of which blazed a diamond as large as a
walnut, while the prince carried one with a sapphire of equal size.
After a deal of marching backwards and forwards, the platform was
placed on the highest point of the Gump, which was now a hill of
flowers, and every fairy walked up and bowed, said something to the
prince and princess, and passed on to a seat at the tables.
At length all were seated, whereupon the prince gave a signal, on
which a number of footmen came forward carrying a table laden with
dainty food in solid gold dishes, and wines in goblets of precious
stones which they placed on the platform before the prince and
princess. As soon as the royal pair began to eat, all the hosts around
them followed their example, and such a merry, jovial meal they had.
The viands disappeared as fast as they could go, laughter and talk
sounded on all sides, and never a sign did any of them give that they
knew that a human being was watching them.
"Ah!" thought the old miser to himself. "I can't get all I'd like to,
but if I could reach up to the prince's table I could get enough at
one grab to set me up for life!"
Stooping down, he slowly and stealthily dragged himself nearer and
nearer to the table. He felt quite sure that no one could see him.
What he himself did not see was that hundreds of wicked little
Spriggans had tied ropes on to him and were holding fast to the ends.
He crawled and crawled so slowly and carefully that it took him some
time to get over the ground, but he managed it at last, and got quite
close up to the lovely little pair. Once there he paused for a moment
and looked back,--perhaps to see if the way was clear for him to run
when he had done what he meant to do. He was rather startled to find
that all was as dark as dark could be, and that he could see nothing
at all behind him. However, he tried to cheer himself by thinking it
was only that his eyes were dazzled by looking at the bright lights so
long. He was even more startled, though, when he turned round to the
Gump again, to find that every eye of all those hundreds and thousands
of fairies on the hill was looking straight into his eyes.
At first he was really frightened, but as they did nothing but look,
he told himself that they could not really be gazing at him, and grew
braver with the thought. Then slowly bringing up his hat, as a boy
does to catch a butterfly, he was just going to bring it down on the
silken platform and capture prince and princess, table, gold dishes
and all, when hark! A shrill whistle sounded, the old man's hand, with
the hat in it, was paralyzed in the air, so that he could not move it
backwards or forwards, and in an instant every light went out, and all
was pitchy darkness.
There was a whir-r-r and a buzz, and a whir-r-r, as if a swarm of bees
were flying by him, and the old man felt himself fastened so securely
to the ground that, do what he would, he could not move an inch, and
all the time he felt himself being pinched, and pricked, and tweaked
from top to toe, so that not an inch of him was free from torment. He
was lying on his back at the foot of the Gump, though how he got there
he could never tell. His arms were stretched out and fastened down, so
that he could not do anything to drive off his tormentors, his legs
were so secured that he could not even relieve himself by kicking, and
his tongue was tied with cords, so that he could not call out.
There he lay, no one knows how long, for to him it seemed hours, and
no one else but the fairies knew anything about it. At last he felt a
lot of little feet running over him, but whose they were he had no
idea until something perched on his nose, and by the light of the moon
he saw it was a Spriggan. His wicked old heart sank when he realized
that he had got into their clutches, for all his life he had heard
what wicked little creatures they were.
The little imp on his nose kicked and danced and stamped about in great
delight at finding himself perched up so high. We all know how painful
it is to have one's nose knocked, even ever so little, so you may
imagine that the old miser did not enjoy himself at all. Master Spriggan
did, though. He roared with laughter, as though he were having a huge
joke, until at last, rising suddenly to his feet and standing on the
tips of his tiny toes, he shouted sharply, "Away! away! I smell the
day!" and to the old man's great relief off he flew in a great hurry,
followed by all his mischievous little companions who had been playing
games, and running races all over their victim's body.
Left at last to himself, the mortified old man lay for some time,
thinking over all that had happened, trying to collect his senses, and
wondering how he should manage to escape from his bonds, for he might
lie there for a week without any human being coming near the place.
Till sunrise he lay there, trying to think of some plan, and then,
what do you think he saw? Why, that he had not been tied down by ropes
at all, but only by thousands of gossamer webs! And there they were
now, all over him, with the dew on them sparkling like the diamonds
that the princess had worn the night before. And those dewdrop
diamonds were all the jewels he got for his night's work.
When he made this discovery he turned over and groaned and wept with
rage and shame, and never, to his dying day, could he bear to look at
sparkling gold or gems.
At last, afraid lest he should be missed, and searchers be sent out to
look for him, he got up, brushed off the dewy webs, and putting on his
battered old hat, crept slowly home. He was wet through with dew,
cold, full of rheumatism, and very much ashamed of himself.
Very good care he took to keep that night's experiences to himself. No
one must know his shame.
Years after, though, when he had become a changed man, and repented of
his former greediness, he let out the story bit by bit to be a lesson
to others, until his friends and neighbors, who loved to listen to
anything about fairies, had gathered it all as I have told it to you
here. And you may be quite sure it is all true, for the old man was
not clever enough to invent it.
--_From "Strange Stories from Cornwall",
by Mabel Quiller-Couch._
THINKING AND DOING
Arrange your papers with your name and grade on the first line;
place the date and your room or teacher's name on the second line;
leave the third line blank, and, beginning with the fourth line,
number the lines from 1 to 6. This exercise is to help you read
quietly and accurately. See that you understand all the directions
in each problem before you attempt to carry them out. On the other
hand, work as quickly as you can.
1. If Christopher Columbus lived before George Washington, make a
cross on the first line, but if George Washington lived before
Columbus, write the word _old_ there.
2. An egg which is not fresh will float in salt water. Out of a dozen
eggs seven floated and five sank.
Were there more fresh eggs or more stale eggs in the dozen? Write your
answer on the second line.
3. "And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then if ever come perfect days."
This is a quotation from a poem by James Russell Lowell. If you think
from these lines that the poet prefers June weather to October
weather, write the word _summer_ on the third line. If you think he
prefers October weather, write the word _autumn_ there.
4. At an army camp in Georgia the flag on the flag-staff at
headquarters was blowing toward Washington, D. C.
From what general direction was the wind? Write your answer on the
fourth line.
5. All the education of the middle ages was to be found in the
monasteries.
From this fact which would you expect to find the better educated,
churchmen or soldiers?
6. If pink is lighter than red, and red is lighter than purple, which
of these colors is darker than red?
A TRIP TO THE MOON
You should all begin reading at the same time.
This is a selection that you can read easily. You will have to pay
close attention, however, because you will be asked questions about
the interesting facts told here.
Your teacher will decide when to have you close your books. Then she
will have a contest between the boys and girls or between sections
of the class to see which group can answer the questions better.
When we were very young we had a nursery rhyme which told of an old
witch who rode away upon a broomstick to sweep the cobwebs from the
sky. Of course we understood that it was just a nonsense rhyme. But
nowadays when people can really fly up in the air, not on broomsticks
but on aeroplanes, it does not seem so nonsensical.
Suppose we agree to take a trip, in our imagination, right away up
into the sky till we reach the moon! Of course, we can never hope
really to fly to the moon. One reason is that the air goes up only a
comparatively short distance. But you can do wonderful things in your
imagination! We shall suppose we have a machine that does not require
air in which to fly, and that we can live very comfortably in an
enclosed cabin attached to this wonderful flying machine.
At what speed are we going to make our machine fly? Some aeroplanes have
traveled more than one hundred miles in an hour, but that speed will be
far too slow for us because we have such great distances to go.
Flying at one hundred miles per hour, we should not reach the moon for
three months. And the moon is our nearest neighbor in space. The sun
is four hundred times as far away as the moon, so it would take us a
hundred years to reach the sun. And even this far-distant sun seems a
near neighbor when we think of the distance from us to the fixed
stars. To reach the nearest of the stars it would take us millions of
years. I am not going to ask you to imagine yourself living for
millions of years, shut up in the cabin of our flying machine. It is
quite evident that we must increase the speed of our machine. Suppose
we make it go as fast as a ray of light can travel! How fast is that?
The speed of light is so great than any race we set for it on this
earth seems no time at all. You know that it takes us several months
to travel round this world in a steamer. Of course we could go far
faster in a flying machine. But even if we could keep flying all the
time at one hundred miles per hour, it would take us ten days.
Suppose now that it were possible to send a ray of light on this same
journey around the world. It would have traveled right round before
you could count "one". Indeed it could travel five hundred times round
the world in one minute. That may help to give you some vague sort of
idea of the speed at which our flying machine is to travel.
Even at this unthinkable speed, it would take us about four years to
reach the nearest star. Does it really take light several years to
travel from a star to us? It does; it takes light hundreds of years to
reach us from some of the distant stars. If one of these far-distant
stars should disappear suddenly, you and I would know nothing about
the change. When we looked up into the sky we should still see the
star shining away year after year. Our children and our grandchildren
would still believe the star to be where it had been always, for the
last rays of light, sent out by the star before it disappeared, would
take hundreds of years to reach this world. There is no hope of our
ever reaching these very distant stars in our imaginary flying
machine; it would be too big a tax on our imagination to live in the
cabin of our machine for hundreds of years.
For the present we shall be content with a trip to the moon. But one
boy says that he cannot imagine our flying machine forcing its way
through the air at the enormous speed at which light travels. Even
when traveling by motor car, at the comparative snail-pace of, say,
forty miles per hour, we have to see that hats and veils are well
fastened on. This boy says that he has been told that a good deal of
the additional energy required to drive a train at sixty miles an hour
is used up in forcing the train through the ocean of air.
We quite agree with this boy that it would be very difficult to imagine
our machine traveling through the air at the speed of light. We shall
get over this difficulty by making our machine not exceed one hundred
miles per hour so long as we are in the ocean of air. When we get beyond
this great blanket of air, we can increase our speed to that of light.
I am very glad that we have come to this arrangement, for I had just
been thinking that our journey to the moon would be a very disappointing
one, as it would have taken only about one second to get there. Now our
journey will be much slower and we shall have time to look about us.
When we emerge from the misty clouds we cannot see the instruments for
the moisture on the window. By the time it clears we are about two
miles upwards off the earth. We find that the temperature has fallen
down below freezing-point. We are rather surprised, as it looks lovely
and warm in the sunshine. The moment we shoot above the clouds we are
in the sunshine, with the sea of clouds below us. Our thermometer is
placed in the shade, so that the direct rays of the sun cannot reach
it, as we wish to know the temperature of the surrounding air.
The reason why it is colder here than down on the surface of the earth
is that we have climbed out of the thickest part of the great blanket of
air which serves to keep you warm. The air is what you might describe as
much thicker near the earth, but, to speak more correctly, we should say
that the air is much denser at the surface of the earth. Up here it is
much flimsier. One girl says that she climbed a high mountain with her
father, on a beautiful summer day, and it was so cold on the top of the
mountain they could not stay there many minutes.
We keep rushing upwards and in half an hour we know that we must be
about fifty miles from the earth, as we have been traveling at the
rate of one hundred miles per hour. The air at this height is so rare
that we could not possibly live in it. It is a good thing that we are
in an enclosed cabin, and have plenty of fresh air in liquid form,
which gives off ordinary air just at the rate we require it.
We know that in about an hour and a half we should be clear of the
atmosphere altogether, and that we may travel thereafter at the speed
of light, which means about eleven million miles per minute.
One little girl says she is feeling very sleepy, and as she was too
excited to sleep much last night, I advise her to lie down and have a
sleep now; we shall waken her when we arrive at the moon.
Imagine then that we have arrived at the moon. It looks like our own
world, "the earth," only there is nothing growing on it; it seems to
be all bare rocks. But the mountains look very high; some of them are
really higher than the highest mountains on the earth.
Most of the children in our cabin say that they thought the moon was
quite smooth, and had a sort of polished surface. When they were told
that the moon did not send out light, but merely reflected the light
of the sun, they pictured some sort of mirror-like surface.
We are startled by a sudden cry of surprise behind us; the little girl
who was sleeping has wakened up, and looking out of the window behind
us, she calls: "Oh! look how huge the moon has grown! It is far, far
bigger than the sun!"
Looking out at her window, we see what does look like a giant moon.
But our little friend is very much surprised when I tell her that that
is old Mother Earth, and that the rocky mountains close to us are part
of the moon. But how can the earth shine like the moon? In exactly the
same way as the moon shines; both merely reflect the light sent out by
the sun.
We can scarcely believe that this "huge half-moon", standing out so
clearly against a jet-black sky, is really the earth which we left a
few hours ago in broad daylight. But the people on the part of it
which we speak of as shining like the moon are still in broad
daylight. Those people living on the half of the great globe which
appears dark to us are in darkness except for the light which is
reaching them from this moon up here where we are at present.
One boy says that some of the astronomers on the earth may be looking
at us through their telescopes, and he starts making Boy Scout signals
with his arms. He is disappointed when I tell him that the very best
telescope on earth would not enable the astronomers to see our flying
machine even as a speck on the face of the moon. If our machine had
been as big as one of our largest buildings, it could then have been
seen as a tiny dot.
But we cannot help staring at that great ball on which we live, and
which we left so recently. This distant view gives us a good idea of
how much bigger the earth is than the moon. Of course if you look down
at the moon at present you can get no idea of its size; you can see
only a small part of it, just as you could see only a small part of
the earth until you made this imaginary voyage skywards. But you can
remember what the moon looked like when you saw it from the earth.
Looking back now at the far-distant earth, you would say that it was
much more than four times the size of the moon. When we are comparing
the sizes of the earth and the moon, and the other heavenly bodies, it
is usual to speak of their diameters. The word _diameter_ is made out
of two Greek words which mean _a measure through_. The diameter of the
moon or of the earth is just the distance right through the center
from one side to the other. We say that the diameter of the earth is
four times as great as the diameter of the moon, but the earth could
contain sixty-four moons.
Suppose we take a quiet cruise about the moon in our imaginary flying
machine. One boy remarks that he is glad it is a fine day, for, although
we cannot leave the cabin of our flying machine, we can see much better
on a fine day. Another boy says he guesses that if we were to stay here
for a hundred years it would be fine every day. He is quite right. There
are no clouds around the moon, and so there cannot be any rain.
When we looked at the moon from the earth, the moon's surface seemed to
be beautifully smooth, but now that we have traveled to it in our flying
machine we find it to be anything but smooth. It seems to be covered
entirely with high mountains, and great rings of mountains. One boy says
that those large basins formed by the rings of mountains remind him of
some mountains that he saw on the earth, and that he was told the
mountains had formed the crater of a great volcano in the long ago.
But what is a volcano? Although a volcano is described often as a
burning mountain, it is not really burning, but it has a large chimney
in the center of it reaching far down into the earth. Great quantities
of molten rock-material are hurled up this chimney while the volcano
is active. There are a few active volcanoes on the earth today, but
there are traces of very many more that have long ceased to be active.
One boy hopes that we may find an active volcano as we cruise around
the moon, but he will be disappointed. The moon is no longer a hot
body like the earth, and the earth used to be very much hotter than at
present, when there were a great many volcanoes at work.
Looking at the moon, we can see that it must have been very hot at one
time also; it seems so covered with volcanic mountains that one ring
sometimes overlaps another.
But what is this huge dark-colored part of the moon? One boy guesses
that it is a sea or a lake, and when I tell him that there is no water
on the moon he is very much surprised. He says that there must have
been water at one time, for he has seen a map of the moon, and it
contained a lot of Latin names which his tutor told him meant the Sea
of Rains, the Sea of Tranquillity, the Lake of Dreams, and so on.
No doubt the map which the boy saw was quite a correct map of the moon,
for we speak of those dark patches as seas and lakes, although we know
now that no water exists, and probably never existed, on the moon.
It is those great dark patches on the moon which seem to form the
man's face; this dark patch which we are coming to is the one which
forms his right eye. It is called the Sea of Rains.
How bright the mountains look in the sunshine, and how black their
shadows are. That is because there is no air. Notice how very clearly
you can see the far-distant mountain ranges. You can scarcely believe
me when I tell you that the mountains on either side of that great
crater are more than one hundred miles apart. But do you not remember
how the mountains on the earth have appeared to us sometimes to be
very much nearer than usual? If you asked the reason for this, you
were told that it was because the atmosphere happened to be
particularly clear. Well! here on the moon we have no air at all and
that is why we can see everything so very clearly.
One little girl says that she had been wondering why there is nothing
growing on the moon, but now she sees that not even grass, nor moss, nor
heather could grow, since there is no air and no water. Not only are the
mountains bare rock, but the whole surface of the land is the same.
--_From "The Stars and Their Mysteries",
by Charles R. Gibson, F.R.S.E._
QUESTIONS
1. Why can no aeroplane ever fly to the moon?
2. How long would it take an aeroplane flying 100 miles an hour to
reach the moon?
3. How much farther away is the sun than the moon?
4. Give some idea how far away the fixed stars are.
5. Why is it colder as we rise up in the air?
6. What does the surface of the moon look like?
7. How would the earth look to a person on the moon?
8. How much larger is the earth than the moon?
9. What is the weather on the moon?
10. What is a volcano?
11. Why could you see a long distance on the moon?
12. Why does nothing grow on the moon?
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Page x: There is a split hyphenated word in the table. It was done
to shorten the width of the table.
Page 25: Added starting quote mark. (... the Swallow, "and the ...)
Page 28: Added starting quote mark. (...the Mayor. "We must ...)
Page 47: Added the word "to", looks like it was omitted by the
printer. (... to walk to town; will ...)
Corrected obvious spelling and punctuation errors throughout.
The "parfleches" is mispelled "parfleshes" throughout the text. The
text as has been left unchanged.
There are several words that appear both as a hypenated word and an
un-hyphenated word in the text, such as "hill-side" and "hillside".
The text as has been left unchanged.