sang about her in every tone; a little more and they would have quoted
her witty sayings; the whole of America was filled with selenomania.

The scientific journals treated the question which touched upon the
enterprise of the Gun Club more specially; they published the letter
from the Observatory of Cambridge, they commented upon it and approved
of it without reserve.

In short, even the most ignorant Yankee was no longer allowed to be
ignorant of a single fact relative to his satellite, nor, to the oldest
women amongst them, to have any superstitions about her left. Science
flooded them; it penetrated into their eyes and ears; it was impossible
to be an ass--in astronomy.

Until then many people did not know how the distance between the earth
and the moon had been calculated. This fact was taken advantage of to
explain to them that it was done by measuring the parallax of the moon.
If the word "parallax" seemed new to them, they were told it was the
angle formed by two straight lines drawn from either extremity of the
earth's radius to the moon. If they were in doubt about the perfection
of this method, it was immediately proved to them that not only was the
mean distance 234,347 miles, but that astronomers were right to within
seventy miles.

To those who were not familiar with the movements of the moon, the
newspapers demonstrated daily that she possesses two distinct movements,
the first being that of rotation upon her axis, the second that of
revolution round the earth, accomplishing both in the same time--that is
to say, in 27-1/3 days.