THE BIG BOOK.
"Please tell us another story from the Big Book," begged Susie as the
family were all seated on the piazza one beautiful summer evening.
The great full moon, like a ball of molten iron, was rising in the east.
It plowed a silver path across the river. Fireflies glimmered and
sparkled in the dusky shadows of the meadow and in and out of the garden
shrubs. The merry chirping of the crickets and the low hum of insect
voices filled the air. Down by the creek the whip-poor-will told his one
story over and over.
"A story from the Big Book!" repeated Uncle Robert. "There are so many
and they are all so wonderful. Ever since man was created he has read
stories in the earth, water, and sky, and in all living things.
Everything he has found in Nature helps him to live and grow wiser and
better. We could never understand printed books unless we studied the
Big Book. The more we read what God has written the more we shall want
to read what other people have found out and put into printed books.
The true desire to read these books springs from our love and study of
Nature.
"It was written for many years that the sun moved around the earth. But
Copernicus studied the sun, earth, and stars anew, and he showed that
the printed books were wrong by proving that the earth moved around the
sun. Galileo read the same story through the telescope that he made.
"Steam had always been a very common thing. Hot vapor had risen from
heated water ever since fire was discovered, but the real story of steam
had not been read until Watt sat long hours by a boiling teakettle. Then
came the locomotive, the railroad, and mighty engines driving wheels
that work for man."
"Wasn't that a good story to read from the Big Book!" said Frank.
"Lightning had flashed and thunder rolled throughout the ages. Men
feared, wondered, and worshiped that mighty hidden power. Franklin
looked straight at the forked lightning and asked, 'What are you?' The
answer came in the telegraph that is fast making the nations of the
earth one great family. Bell listened long and carefully to sounds, and
now I can talk from New York to my friends in Chicago.
"Are not these stories from the Big Book as wonderful as miracles? These
are only a few of the many stories that have been read. Countless more
will be read when children really open their eyes to the 'law of the
Lord that converteth the soul.' Great men and great minds have road
Nature's revelation in the past, but the time is coming when you and I
and all children will read every day and hour the hidden things that
surround us like light and press upon us like air. The Creator is
writing the Big Book all the time for us--His children. Should we not
read what He says there?"
The children did not understand all that Uncle Robert said, yet they
loved to listen.
"We have found that our farm is a very interesting page of the Book,"
said Mrs. Leonard.
"Yes, that is the precious thing about it all.
"Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur or see it glisten."
All eyes were gazing at the moon as it seemed to rise above the trees.
The great face of the man in the moon became distinct as he looked down
upon the rolling earth.
"A beautiful and wonderful world," continued Uncle Robert, "but probably
not a bit more wonderful than the countless worlds we see up there.
"Just think! we are on a great round ball, and it is moving on its axis
from west to east toward the moon. The moon, you know, does not really
move over our heads as it seems to do. The round earth rolls upon its
axis, and that makes the moon seem to rise higher and higher, and then
sink away below the western horizon."
"To-morrow night it will come up in the east a little later," said
Frank.
"Round and round we go upon our ball of earth. The sun seems to rise and
set just as the moon does, but it is the world itself that makes the sun
and moon seem to rise and set," said Uncle Robert.
"What is our earth made of?" asked Donald.
"Just what you see before you," answered Uncle Robert. "Under our feet
we have the ground, the soil, gravel, sand, and loam, which is made
of--"
"Ground-up rock," said Frank.
"And underneath the soil there is--"
"The solid rock," said Frank.
"And underneath that?" asked Mr. Leonard.
"We do not know, but it is quite certain the solid earth is made of
ground-up rock and rock that may be ground. The mills are all at work,
grinding all the time."
"The mills!" said Susie. "Where are the mills?"
"I know one," said Donald. "The river is a great mill. Don't you
remember about the pebbles?"
"And the glaciers are mills, too," said Frank.
[Illustration: Glaciers on the Coast of Norway]
"Yes, the rivers, the ice rivers or glaciers, the wind, the frost, heat
and cold, all grind masses of rock into bowlders, pebbles, and sand."
"The rock has been ground so long I should think there would be nothing
left but soil," said Frank.
"You saw the limestone down by the spring?" asked Uncle Robert.
"Yes," the children said together.
"That limestone was once soft mud spread out upon the bottom of the
ocean in shallow water."
"How do you know that is so, uncle?" questioned Frank.
[Illustration: Fossil fish.]
"There are many proofs, but the best proof is that in the limestone are
found shells of animals that live in the sea," said Uncle Robert.
"Fossils," said Mrs. Leonard.
"Yes, fossils. They are the remains of plants and animals that lived a
very long time ago. Many rocks are almost entirely made of fossils. Fish
and shells also have been covered with soft clay and left their
imprints. Great beasts have walked in the mud, and we now find their
footprints in the hard stone. Coral--you have seen coral?--is often found
in limestone. It is made of the shells of little animals, called the
polyp, which live in the sea."
[Illustration: Coral]
"So you see that the firm ground under foot is made of rock, some of
which has been ground up over and over again. But there is something
else besides rock that makes the world"
"Water," said Donald promptly as he looked down upon the river.
"Yes, the water is just as much a part of our world as the solid rock
and the soil. There is water in the soil and in the solid rock, too. It
comes out to us in----"
"Springs," said Donald.
"Water fills hollows in the earth----"
"Ponds and lakes," said Frank.
"Water runs down the slopes--"
"Streams," said Frank.
"Rivers," said Donald.
"There is water in the air--mist, fogs, and clouds--and there is much
water in the air which we can not see."
"Vapor?" asked Frank.
"Sometimes water is so thin we can not see it, and again it is so thick
and hard that we may walk over it."
"Ice," said Susie.
"Tiny bits of vapor come together until they become so heavy that they
fall to the ground."
"Raindrops," said Donald.
"Water is sometimes frozen in the clouds in beautiful white crystals,
and then they sail down to the earth."
"Snowflakes," said Susie.
"Sometimes drops start from the clouds and go through very cold air. The
cold air freezes them quickly, and then they rattle on the roof and dash
on the ground. They cut the corn leaves and destroy the crops."
"Hailstones," said Donald.
"Oh," said Susie, "I saw a hailstone once as big as an egg."
"The lakes are hollows in the ground filled with water. There are many
small hollows, and some big ones, but there is one so great that we may
call it immense. It is the largest hollow in the world--so large that it
occupies three-fourths of the earth's surface."
[Illustration: Ocean islands]
"The ocean," said Frank.
"Yes, the ocean is only a great big hollow filled with water."
"How deep is the ocean?" asked Frank.
"Very deep in some places--deeper than the height of the highest
mountains. In others it is very shallow. In some places bits and masses
of land rise out of the ocean."
"Islands?" asked Donald.
"Four great masses of land rise above the ocean level. These immense
rock masses are called--"
"Continents," said Frank.
"Yes," said Uncle Robert. "We live on one of them."
"The continent of North America," said Donald.
"Our island rises right out of the river," said Susie.
"Rock and water make only a part of our world. We live on the firm
earth. But we live in something. Indeed, we live at the bottom of a
great, deep ocean, deeper than the water ocean, and broader than the
rock and water surface taken all together."
"We live at the bottom of an ocean!" said Donald in surprise.
"Now you are joking, Uncle Robert," said Susie. "If we lived on the
bottom of an ocean we should all drown."
"Fish live in the ocean, and we live in an ocean, too--a very deep one,
how deep no one really knows. It may be a hundred, or hundreds of miles
deep. We see a part of the surface of the earth and of the water, but no
one has ever seen the surface of the mighty ocean in which we live."
Susie and Donald were puzzled. Frank's face lighted up as he said:
"I think you mean the air, Uncle Robert."
"You are right, Frank. The great ocean in which we live is the air, or,
as it is called, the atmosphere. The atmosphere is just as much a part
of our world as the rock and the water. The rock we may call solid, the
water fluid, and the air gaseous. Solid, fluid, gas."
"How do we know that the atmosphere is so deep?" asked Frank.
"We do not know exactly, but there are ways of proving that it is very,
very deep. When people began to study the atmosphere they thought it
extended about fifty miles from the surface of the earth. Now they are
sure that it is much deeper. We know that air has weight, like soil and
water. It presses on us and everything else--"
"Fifteen pounds to the square inch," said Donald.
"We weigh the air with the---"
"Barometer," said Susie.
"It is heavier at the ocean level than it is on the tops of mountains.
We are sure that the higher we go up---"
"The less the air weighs," said Frank.
"At the height of fifty miles it is thought to have little or no weight,
and so people believed that was as far as it extended. But in time they
discovered another way of measuring the atmosphere. You have seen
falling stars, haven't you?" asked Uncle Robert.
[Illustration: Meteors.]
"Oh, yes," said the three children together.
"I saw a star fall, so fast--just like a rocket. Then the light went
out, and I wondered where it went," said Susie.
"Falling stars are not stars at all, though they look like them. They
are pieces of rock that break off from other worlds and whiz through
space."
"Oh!" said Susie.
"Outside of our atmosphere there may be nothing for these masses of rock
to strike against, but just as soon as they come into the air, it tries
to stop them. The air is not strong enough to stop them, but it grinds
them up."
"Grinds them up!" exclaimed Donald. "Isn't that wonderful? But, uncle,
what makes them look just like fire?"
"If you put an axe or scythe on a dry grindstone and turn the crank,
what do you see?"
"Sparks of fire," said Frank.
"Why do you put grease or oil upon the axles of your buggy?"
"To keep them from becoming hot and dry," said Frank. "One time when
father and I were on a train there was a hot box, and we had to stop to
cool it."
"The heat and the sparks of fire are caused by one body rubbing against
another. The faster they move, the greater the heat. This rubbing is
called friction."
"There was a time," said Mr. Leonard, "when fires were started by
rubbing two pieces of wood together. Some Indians do so now."
"Then the great pieces of rock rub against the air when they whiz
through it, and that makes the sparks?" asked Frank.
"You are right. We can see the blaze of fire caused by the friction."
"I should think the rocks would fall on us and kill us," said Donald.
"Most of them are probably ground up into bits of dust before they reach
the ground. Some of them, indeed, do strike the ground, and very large
ones bury themselves deep in the earth. When we go to the Field Columbian
Museum, in Chicago, we shall see these visitors from other worlds. They
are called meteoric stones, or meteorites. When they are in the air we
call them meteors."
"I am going to watch the next one I see," said Susie.
"They fly so fast that you hardly see them before they are gone," said
Donald.
"Men who study the heavens tell of the depth of the atmosphere by the
angle the meteor makes in falling, but perhaps you can not understand
that now. So you see, children, we live on the bottom of a great ocean
of air, and that air, or atmosphere, is a part of our world--the outside
part."
"How plain it all is," said Mrs. Leonard, "when we think of it this
way!"
"Now we have the land and the water," said Uncle Robert.
"And the atmosphere," put in Donald.
"And they are all right here close to us. Here is the land with its
hollows, and there," pointing to the river glistening in the moonlight,
"is the water, and--"
"You can't see the air," said Donald.
"We can feel it, anyway," said Susie.
"How large is the earth, uncle?" asked Frank.
"Eight thousand miles through it and twenty-five thousand miles around
it," answered Uncle Robert.
"But, uncle, is it all solid rock for eight thousand miles?"
"No one knows. The rocky outside of the ball is called the crust of the
earth. Miners have dug down nearly four thousand feet, and makers of
artesian wells have bored still farther. They always find rock."
"I wonder how far four thousand feet would be," said Donald.
"A little over three quarters of a mile," said Mr. Leonard.
"The farther they go down into the crust of the earth, the warmer they
find it. I have been down in a mine thirty-two hundred feet, and it was
very hot. No one could have lived there if cool air had not been brought
down from the surface.
"Some people have thought that inside the crust of the earth the rock is
all a molten mass, like melted iron. You have read about volcanoes, and
of the lava that is thrown out of them?"
"Does that come out of the inside of the earth?" asked Donald.
[Illustration: Down in a Gold Mine]
"It comes from somewhere in the earth. Some men give their whole lives to
the study of these questions, but you know they can not see beneath the
crust of the earth. It is thought by some that the weight of the crust
would keep the center of the earth a solid mass. So you see there are
still many questions unsettled. We know that the crust is moving up and
down all the time."
"Oh, I hope the land won't rise here!" said Susie.
"You wouldn't know it, Susie, if it did," said Uncle Robert, laughing.
"Unless there was an earthquake," said Frank.
"Or a volcano," said Donald. "I'd like to see one."
"I would like to see the ocean," said Frank. "It must be grand to stand
on the shore and look way off and not see anything but water."
"It is a grand sight, Frank. I have sat on the beach many a time and
watched the waves roll in, and thought of the wonderful work the ocean
is doing. You know it is the great reservoir that supplies all the land
with water."
[Illustration: View of the Ocean]
"The heat of the sun lifts the water up, or evaporates it. The vapor
that makes the clouds rises into the air. The winds blow the vapor many
long miles, and some of the clouds come right over our heads. The cold
air draws the little bits of vapor together and makes the clouds heavy,
and down they fall upon the earth as drops of rain.
"Some of the rain runs directly into the streams. Some of the rain water
sinks down into the earth; in the gravel it sinks fast; in the sand it
sinks slower; and in the loam, clay, and rock it sinks very slowly
indeed. The water in the ground dissolves the rock or the loose earth
into little particles so fine that the tiny roots, or root hairs, drink
them up, and so the rock furnishes a part of the nourishment, or food,
of plants.
"Without the water that the clouds bring no plant could grow. It gives
life and growth to everything that lives, and then sinks deep into the
earth. It comes out of the ground again in springs, and flows away in
rivulets, brooks, creeks, and rivers--away, and away, back to the ocean
again.
"On its way to the ocean it wears down the land, carries silt from place
to place, spreads it out on beaches, sand bars, bottom lands, deltas,
and on the bottom of shallow places in the ocean."
"Isn't it strange how everything changes, and how all the changes help
us?" said Frank thoughtfully.
"Yes, Frank, it is wonderful how the Creator of all things is constantly
moving earth, air, and water, and, as you say, making all these changes
to help man."
"It is the Big Book that tells us of this marvelous world of ours and of
other worlds as well. It lies open before us for us to read every day.
God has created and is still creating our home, the dwelling place of
His children. We must study Him, my dear children, in all He has made.
We must learn of His works in order to use everything to make man
happier, better, and more useful."
Mr. Leonard, who had been listening very attentively to the story, said,
as his face lighted with a happy smile:
"I never thought of it all in that way before. Every day, in all our
work on the farm and in the house--indeed, wherever we may be--we should
learn new and beautiful revelations from our Heavenly Father; how much
He is constantly giving us, and how thankful we should be."
The moon had risen to its full glory over the earth. The waters of the
river glistened. The trees, cornfields, and meadows were peaceful and
grand, as though they, too, felt the power of the glorious light.
Susie put her brown arms around her mother's neck and kissed her
good-night.
"Oh, how I love the Big Book!" she said.
"I wish I could read it as all those great men have read it," said
Frank.
"So do I," said Donald.
"'Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth
knowledge,'" mused the mother as her loved ones went to bed with sweet
thoughts of a beautiful world and a loving God.