f
tellin' a man that it's ninety-three millions o' miles between the earth
and the sun? There's lots o' folks as knows that; but there's not one in
ten thousand as knows what it means. You gets no forrader wi' lookin' at
the figures in a book. You must thin yourself out, and make your body
lighter than air, and stretch and stretch at yourself until you gets the
sun and planets, floatin' like, in the middle o' your mind. Then you
begins to get hold on it. Or what's the good o' sayin' that Saturn has
rings and nine moons? You must go to one o' them moons, and see Saturn
half fillin' the sky, wi' his rings cuttin' the heavens from top to
bottom, all coloured wi' crimson and gold--then you begins to stagger at
it. That's why I say you can't think o' these things till they've
knocked you silly. Now there's Sir Robert Ball--it's knocked him silly,
I can tell you. I knowed that when I went to his lecture, by the
pictures he showed us, and I sez to myself, 'Bob,' I sez, 'that's a man
worth listenin' to.'

"You're right, sir. I wouldn't pay the least attention to anything you
might say about the stars unless you'd told me that it knocked you silly
to think on 'em. No, and I wouldn't talk to you about 'em either. You
wouldn't understand.

"And, as you were sayin', it isn't easy to get them big things the right
way up. When things gets beyond a certain bigness you don't know which
way up they are; and as like as not they're standin' on their heads when
you think they're standin' on their heels. That's the way with the
stars. They all want lookin' at t'other way up from what most people
looks at 'em. And perhaps it's a good thing they looks at 'em the wrong
way; becos if they looked at 'em the right way it would scare 'em out o'
their wits, especially the women--same as it does my missis when she
hears me and Mrs. Abel talkin'. Always exceptin' Mrs. Abel; you can't
scare her; and she sees most things right way up, that she does!

"But when it comes to the stars, you want to be a bit of a _medium_
before you can get at 'em. Oh yes, I've been a medium in my time, more
than I care to think of, and I could be a medium again to-morrow, if I
wanted to. But them's the only sort of folks as can see things from both
ends. Most folks only look at things from one end--and that as often as
not the wrong un. Mediums looks from both ends; and, if they're good at
it, they soon find out which end's right. You see, some on 'em--like me,
for inst