ay, up towards
Greenland and Iceland itself. It's extr'or'nary, Mary, that the weather
should grow cold as a body journeys south; but so it is, by all accounts.
I never could understand it, and it isn't so in Ameriky, I'm sartain. I
suppose it must come of their turning the months round, and having their
winter in the midst of the dog-days. I never could understand it, though
Gar'ner has tried, more than once, to reason me into it. I believe, but I
don't understand."

"It is all told in my geography here," answered Mary, mechanically taking
down the book, for her thoughts were far away in those icy seas that her
uncle had been so graphically describing. "I dare say we can find it all
explained in the elementary parts of this book."

"They _do_ make their geographies useful, now-a-days," said the deacon,
with rather more animation than he had shown before, that morning.
"They've got 'em to be, now, almost as useful as almanacs. Read what it
says about the seasons, child."

"It says, sir, that the changes in the seasons are owing to 'the
inclination of the earth's axis to the plane of its orbit,' I do not
exactly understand what that means, uncle.'

"No,--it's not as clear as it might be.--The declination--"

"Inclination, sir, is what is printed here."

"Ay, inclination. I do not see why any one should have much inclination
for winter, but so it must be, I suppose. The Earth's orbit has an
inclination towards changes,' you say."

"The changes in the seasons, sir, are owing to 'the inclination of the
earth's axis to the plane of its orbit.' It does not say that the orbit
has an inclination in any particular way."

Thus was it with Mary Pratt, and thus was it with her uncle, the deacon.
One of the plainest problems in natural philosophy was Hebrew to both,
simply because the capacity that Providence had so freely bestowed on each
had never been turned to the consideration of such useful studies. But,
while the mind of Mary Pratt was thus obscured on this simple, and, to
such as choose to give it an hour of reflection, perfectly intelligible
proposition, it was radiant as the day on another mystery, and one that
has confounded thousands of the learned, as well as of the unlearned. To
her intellect, nothing was clearer, no moral truth more vivid, no physical
fact more certain, than the incarnation of the Son of God. She had the
"evidence of things not seen," in the fulness of Divine grace; and was
profound on this,