t and uncomfortable corresponds to the
Torrid.

D. is--that is to say are----*

* Pardon us for interrupting--but
we thought this was to be a
geography book.
_The Reader._

CHAPTER VIII

THE AGE OF THE GLOBE

[Illustration: THE NEW WORLD / THE OLD WORLD]

Some people are sensitive about their ages. The Giddy Globe has never
told us hers.

Rude men of science, after careful examination, declare she can't be a
day under five billion years old.

Theologians, ever tactful in feminine matters, set her down as a
shrinking young thing of barely four thousand summers.

Real delicacy of feeling goes with the bulging tum rather than with the
bulging forehead; who ever saw a thin Bishop or a fat man of science!

_Happy the man with the bulging Tum,_
_Who smiles and smiles and is never glum!--_
_But alas for the man with the bulging brow,_
_If he wanted to smile, he wouldn't know how!_

If the Giddy Globe asked _us_ to guess her age, we should say, without a
moment's hesitation, "Whatever it is you certainly don't look it!"

Astronomers may say what they like, a Planet is as old as it looks,
especially if it is a Lady-Planet, and we have seen ours when she didn't
look a June day over sixteen! and, not having a bulging forehead, we
told her so!

Astronomers think themselves so wise, but what do they know about the
sex of the Planets?

With the exception of Mother Earth and old Sol Phoebus,--nothing!

If you asked an Astronomer whether the Pleiad girls were really the
daughters of Atlas, or what Jupiter was doing with eight Moons (if they
_were_ Moons), he would think you were trifling with him.

But is it not possible that the old Greek tales were the garbled gossip
of an age-forgotten science of which we have only the A.B.C.?

If it is Love that makes the world go round (and who can prove that it
isn't?), what makes the other Planets go round?

How about the movements of the Heavenly Bodies?

How about----*

* This is all very interesting,
but don't you think perhaps
it is----
_The Reader._

Quite right! Quite right! how we do run on!