And when you did get
there you would have arrived at a more desolate country than you ever
dreamed of--a place much like what we might imagine our earth would have
become if there were no water, no air (for if there is air, it is so thin
that no creature like any we know could breathe it), no greenness or
beauty, though there might be scenery grand in its awfulness.
Have you ever looked through a telescope at the moon? I have. Last summer I
was staying at a seaside town, and one evening I noticed a crowd gathered
on the sands. As I came nearer, I found that a man was showing the moon and
planets through his telescope to any who wished to see what they could see.
He was selling peeps through the telescope, which was a pretty good-sized
one, at a penny a peep. Now, though I had read a great deal about the moon,
and had seen in books photographs of what are called lunar landscapes, I
had never once had a chance of looking at her face through anything but a
bit of smoked glass, at the time of an eclipse.
So I paid my penny, and when my turn came I stood upon the stool and had my
peep. I can only tell you that the moon did not look nearly so beautiful to
me through the showman's little telescope as she did when my peep was over,
and I saw her once more sailing through the deep blue of the sky, the queen
of night indeed.
I had read that astronomers had found that the nearer their great
telescopes brought them to the moon, the more like a barren rock she
became, and when I had this nearer view of her than ever before, she looked
to me just as she had been described, like "a burnt-out cinder.
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