you can always see them, though some
nights you would have to sit up very late.

Is that a true story? No. But, I can tell you a true one that is even
more wonderful. Once upon a time, before the bear story was invented and
before people had tin dippers, they used to think of the Little Dipper
as a little dog. And so they gave a funny name to the Pole star. They
called it Cynosura, which means "the dog's tail." We sometimes say of a
great man, "he was the cynosure of all eyes," meaning that everybody
looked at him. But the original cynosure was and is the Pole star,
because all the stars in the sky seem to revolve around it. The two
Dippers chase round it once every twenty-four hours, as you can convince
yourself some night when you stay up late. So that's all for to-night.

What! You want another true story? Well, just one more. Once upon a time
the Big Dipper was a perfect cross. That was about 50,000 years ago.
Fifty thousand years from now the Big Dipper will look like a steamer
chair. How do I know that? Because, the two stars at opposite ends of
the Dipper are going in a direction different from the other five stars.
How do I know that? Why, I don't know it. I just believe it. There are
lots of things I don't know, and I'm not afraid to say so. I hope you
will learn how to say "I don't know." It's infinitely better than
guessing; it saves trouble, and people like you better, because they see
you are honest. I don't know how the stars in the Big Dipper are moving,
but the men who look through telescopes and study mathematics say the
end stars do move in a direction opposite to the others, and they say
the Dipper _must_ have looked like a cross, and will look like a dipper
long, long after we are dead. And I believe them.

CONSTELLATIONS YOU CAN ALWAYS SEE

There are forty-eight well known constellations, but of these only about
a dozen are easy to know. I think a dozen is quite enough for children
to learn. And therefore, I shall tell you how to find only the showiest
and most interesting.

The best way to begin is to describe the ones that you can see almost
every night in the year, because you may want to begin any month in the
year, and you might be discouraged if I talked about things nobody could
see in that month. There are five constellations you can nearly always
see, and these are all near the Pole star.

Doubtless you think you know two of them already--the Big and the Little
Dipper. Ah, I