would be a happy change when she
should leave this dark planet for one of those brighter spheres. She
sighed, at any rate, but thanked the Young Astronomer for the beautiful
sights he had shown her, and gave way to the next comer, who was That
Boy, now in a state of irrepressible enthusiasm to see the Man in the
Moon. He was greatly disappointed at not making out a colossal human
figure moving round among the shining summits and shadowy ravines of the
"spotty globe."

The Landlady came next and wished to see the moon also, in preference to
any other object. She was astonished at the revelations of the powerful
telescope. Was there any live creatures to be seen on the moon? she
asked. The Young Astronomer shook his head, smiling a little at the
question.--Was there any meet'n'-houses? There was no evidence, he said,
that the moon was inhabited. As there did not seem to be either air or
water on its surface, the inhabitants would have a rather hard time of
it, and if they went to meeting the sermons would be apt to be rather
dry. If there were a building on it as big as York minster, as big as
the Boston Coliseum, the great telescopes like Lord Rosse's would make it
out. But it seemed to be a forlorn place; those who had studied it most
agreed in considering it a "cold, crude, silent, and desolate" ruin of
nature, without the possibility, if life were on it, of articulate
speech, of music, even of sound. Sometimes a greenish tint was seen upon
its surface, which might have been taken for vegetation, but it was
thought not improbably to be a reflection from the vast forests of South
America. The ancients had a fancy, some of them, that the face of the
moon was a mirror in which the seas and shores of the earth were imaged.
Now we know the geography of the side toward us about as well as that of
Asia, better than that of Africa. The Astronomer showed them one of the
common small photographs of the moon. He assured them that he had
received letters inquiring in all seriousness if these alleged lunar
photographs were not really taken from a peeled orange. People had got
angry with him for laughing at them for asking such a question. Then he
gave them an account of the famous moon-hoax which came out, he believed,
in 1835. It was full of the most bare-faced absurdities, yet people
swallowed it all, and even Arago is said to have treated it seriously as
a thing that could not well be true, for Mr. Herschel would h