taken it up as a subject. We mean the sun that lights us by day and
leaves us by night. In the first place, it is so far off. No
measuring-tapes could reach it; and both the earth and the sun are
moving about us, that it would be difficult to adjust ladders to reach
it, if we could. Of course, people have written about it, and there are
those who have told us how many miles off it is. But it is a very large
number, with a great many figures in it; and though it is taught in most
if not all of our public schools, it is a chance if any one of the
scholars remembers exactly how much it is.

It is the same with its size. We can not, as we have said, reach it by
ladders to measure it; and if we did reach it, we should have no
measuring-tapes large enough, and those that shut up with springs are
difficult to use in a high places. We are told, it is true, in a great
many of the school-books, the size of the sun; but, again, very few of
those who have learned the number have been able to remember it after
they have recited it, even if they remembered it then. And almost all of
the scholars have lost their school-books, or have neglected to carry
them home, and so they are not able to refer to them,--I mean, after
leaving school. I must say that is the case with me, I should say with
us, though it was different. The older ones gave their school-books to
the younger ones, who took them back to school to lose them, or who have
destroyed them when there were no younger ones to go to school. I should
say there are such families. What I mean is, the fact that in some
families there are no younger children to take off the school-books. But
even then they are put away on upper shelves, in closets or in attics,
and seldom found if wanted,--if then, dusty.

Of course, we all know of a class of persons called astronomers, who
might be able to give us information on the subject in hand, and who