miserable condition. He said he was lonely, it is true,
but he said it in a manly tone, and not as if he were repining at the
inevitable condition of his devoting himself to that particular branch of
science. Of course, he is lonely, the most lonely being that lives in
the midst of our breathing world. If he would only stay a little longer
with us when we get talking; but he is busy almost always either in
observation or with his calculations and studies, and when the nights are
fair loses so much sleep that he must make it up by day. He wants
contact with human beings. I wish he would change his seat and come
round and sit by our Scheherezade!

The rest of the visit went off well enough, except that the "Man of
Letters," so called, rather snubbed some of the heavenly bodies as not
quite up to his standard of brilliancy. I thought myself that the
double-star episode was the best part of it.

I have an unexpected revelation to make to the reader. Not long after
our visit to the Observatory, the Young Astronomer put a package into my
hands, a manuscript, evidently, which he said he would like to have me
glance over. I found something in it which interested me, and told him
the next day that I should like to read it with some care. He seemed
rather pleased at this, and said that he wished I would criticise it as
roughly as I liked, and if I saw anything in it which might be dressed to
better advantage to treat it freely, just as if it were my own
production. It had often happened to him, he went on to say, to be
interrupted in his observations by clouds covering the objects he was
examining for a longer or shorter time. In these idle moments he had put
down many thoughts, unskilfully he feared, but just as they came into his
mind. His blank verse he suspected was often faulty. His thoughts he
knew must be crude, many of them. It would please him to have me amuse
myself by putting them into shape. He was kind enough to say that I was
an artist in words, but he held himself as an unskilled apprentice.

I confess I was appalled when I cast my eye upon the title of the
manuscript, "Cirri and Nebulae."

--Oh! oh!--I said,--that will never do. People don't know what Cirri
are, at least not one out of fifty readers. "Wind-Clouds and
Star-Drifts" will do better than that.

--Anything you like,--he answered,--what difference does it make how you
christen a foundling? These are not my legitimate scientific off