not often get a chance for a drive, and liked the idea of it for its
own sake, as children do, and she insisted that the Lady should go in the
carriage with her. So it was settled that the Capitalist should take the
three ladies in a carriage, and the rest of us go on foot.

The evening behaved as it was bound to do on so momentous an occasion.
The Capitalist was dressed with almost suspicious nicety. We pedestrians
could not help waiting to see them off, and I thought he handed the
ladies into the carriage with the air of a French marquis.

I walked with Dr. Benjamin and That Boy, and we had to keep the little
imp on the trot a good deal of the way in order not to be too long behind
the carriage party. The Member of the Haouse walked with our two
dummies,--I beg their pardon, I mean the Register of Deeds and the
Salesman.

The Man of Letters, hypothetically so called, walked by himself, smoking
a short pipe which was very far from suggesting the spicy breezes that
blow soft from Ceylon's isle.

I suppose everybody who reads this paper has visited one or more
observatories, and of course knows all about them. But as it may
hereafter be translated into some foreign tongue and circulated among
barbarous, but rapidly improving people, people who have as yet no
astronomers among them, it may be well to give a little notion of what
kind of place an observatory is.

To begin then: a deep and solid stone foundation is laid in the earth,
and a massive pier of masonry is built up on it. A heavy block of
granite forms the summit of this pier, and on this block rests the
equatorial telescope. Around this structure a circular tower is built,
with two or more floors which come close up to the pier, but do not touch
it at any point. It is crowned with a hemispherical dome, which, I may
remark, half realizes the idea of my egg-shell studio. This dome is
cleft from its base to its summit by a narrow, ribbon-like opening,
through which is seen the naked sky. It revolves on cannon-balls, so
easily that a single hand can move it, and thus the opening may be turned
towards any point of the compass. As the telescope can be raised or
depressed so as to be directed to any elevation from the horizon to the
zenith, and turned around the entire circle with the dome, it can be
pointed to any part of the heavens. But as the star or other celestial
object is always apparently moving, in consequence of the real rotatory
movement of th