Project Gutenberg's Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880, by Various

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Title: Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880
An Illustrated Weekly

Author: Various

Release Date: March 11, 2009 [EBook #28313]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, JAN 20, 1880 ***

Produced by Annie McGuire

[Illustration: HARPER'S

YOUNG PEOPLE

AN ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY.]

* * * * *

VOL. I.--NO. 12. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. PRICE FOUR
CENTS.

Tuesday, January 20, 1880. Copyright, 1880, by HARPER & BROTHERS. $1.50
per Year, in Advance.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

Poor pussy comes at break of day,
And wakes me up to make me play;
But I am such a sleepy head,
That I'd much rather stay in bed!

OUR OWN STAR.

"As we have already," began the Professor, "had a talk about the stars
in general, let us this morning give a little attention to our own
particular star."

"Is there a star that we can call our own?" asked May, with unusual
animation. "How nice! I wonder if it can be the one I saw from our front
window last evening, that looked so bright and beautiful?"

"I am sure it was not," said the Professor, "if you saw it in the
evening."

"Is it hard to see our star, then?" she said.

"By no means," replied the Professor; "rather it is hard not to see it.
But you must be careful about looking directly at it, or your eyes will
be badly dazzled, it is so very bright. Our star is no other than the
sun. And we are right in calling it a star, because all the stars are
suns, and very likely give light and heat to worlds as large as our
earth, though they are all so far off that we can not see them. Our star
seems so much brighter and hotter than the others, only because it is so
much nearer to us than they are, though still it is some ninety-two
millions of miles away."

"How big is the sun?" asked Joe.

"You can get the clearest idea of its size by a comparison. The earth is
7920 miles in diameter, that is, as measured right through the centre.
Now suppose it to be