| _den'eb_ | Swan | Top of Northern Cross,
| | | or tail of Swan
Regulus | _reg'u-lus_ | Lion | The end of the handle
| | | of the Sickle
----------------+---------------+-------------+--------------------------

The five stars marked * belong to the Southern hemisphere, and we can
never see them unless we travel far south. Last winter I went to Florida
and saw Canopus, but to see the Southern Cross you should cross the
Tropic of Cancer.

HOW TO LEARN MORE

All I can hope to do in this book is to get you enthusiastic about
astronomy. I don't mean "gushy." Look in the dictionary and you will
find that the enthusiast is not the faddist. He is the one who sticks to
a subject for a lifetime.

Nor do I care a rap whether you become an astronomer--or even buy a
telescope. There will be always astronomers coming on, but there are too
few people who know and love even a few of the stars. I want you to make
popular astronomy a life-long hobby. Perhaps you may have to drop it for
ten or fifteen years. Never mind, you will take up the study again. I
can't expect you to read a book on stars if you are fighting to make a
living or support a family, unless it really rests you to read about the
stars. It does rest me. When things go wrong at the office or at home, I
can generally find rest and comfort from music. And if the sky is clear,
I can look at the stars, and my cares suddenly seem small and drop away.

Let me tell you why and how you can get the very best the stars have to
teach you, without mathematics or telescope. Follow this programme and
you need never be afraid of hard work, or of exhausting the pleasures
of the subject. Go to your public library and get one of the books I
recommend in this chapter, and read whatever interests you. I don't care
whether you take up planets before comets or comets before planets, but
whatever you do do it well. Soak the interesting facts right in. Nail
them down. See everything the book talks about. Make notes of things to
watch for. Get a little blank book and write down the date you first saw
each thing of interest. Write down the names of the constellations you
love most. Before you lay down any star book you are reading, jot down
the most wonderful and inspiring thing you have read--even if you have
only time to write a single word that may recall it all