[1] Wherever Q. is referred to in these pages my
brother Nathan is meant. One of his noms de plume
was Gnat Q. Hale, because G and Q may be silent letters.


I wonder if I can explain it to an unlearned world,
which has not studied the book with gray sides and a
green cambric back. Let us try.

You know then, dear world, that when you look at the
North Star, it always appears to you at just the same
height above the horizon or what is between you and the
horizon: say the Dwight School-house, or the houses in
Concord Street; or to me, just now, North College. You
know also that, if you were to travel to the North Pole,
the North Star would be just over your head. And, if you
were to travel to the equator, it would be just on your
horizon, if you could see it at all through the red,
dusty, hazy mist in the north, as you could not. If you
were just half-way between pole and equator, on the line
between us and Canada, the North Star would be half-way
up, or 45@ from the horizon. So you would know there
that you were 45@ from the equator. Then in Boston, you
would find it was 42@ 20' from the horizon. So you know
there that you are 42@ 20' from the equator. At Seattle
again you would find it was 47@ 40' high, so our friends
at Seattle know that they are at 47@ 40' from the
equator. The latitude of a place, in other words, is
found very easily by any observation which shows how high