times I have seen a row of raindrops hanging on a bar by the
window. When the sun catches one of them, it shines so brilliantly that
it is as dazzling as a star; but my sense tells me it is a raindrop, and
not a star at all. It is only because it is so near it seems as bright
and important as a mighty star very, very far away.

We are so much accustomed to this fact that we get into a habit of
judging the distance of things by their size. If we see two lights
shining on a dark night, and one is much larger than the other, we think
that the bright one must be nearer to us; yet it need not necessarily be
so, for the two lights might possibly be at the same distance from us,
and one be large and the other small. There is no way in which we can
tell the truth by just looking at them. Now, if we go out on any fine
moonlight night and look up at the sky, we shall see one object there
apparently much larger than any other, and that is the moon, so the
question that occurs to us at once is, Is the moon really very much
larger than any of the stars, or does it only seem so because it is very
much nearer to us? As a matter of fact, the moon is one of the smallest
objects in view, only, as it is our nearest neighbour, it appears very
conspicuous. Having learned this, we shall probably look about to see
what else there is to attract attention, and we may notice one star
shining very brilliantly, almost like a little lamp, rather low down in
the sky, in that part of it where the sun has lately set. It is so
beautifully bright that it makes all the others look insignificant in
comparison, yet it is not really large compared with the others, only,
as it comes nearer to us than anything else in the sky except the moon,
it looks larger than it has any right to do in comparison with the
others.

After this we might jump to the conclusion that all the bright large
stars are really small and near to us, and all the faintly shining ones
large and far away. But that would not be true at all, for some bright
ones are very far away and some faint ones comparatively near, so that
all we can do is to learn about them from the people who have studied
them and found out about them, and then we shall know of our own
knowledge which of them seem bright only because they are nearer than
the others, and which are really very, very brilliant, and so still
shine brightly, though set in space at an almost infinite distance from
us.

The sun, as we all